Email came out today that CDW will now only offer unlimited PTO effective 4/1/24. Coworkers will not accrue anymore vacation after 9/1/24 and must use all their leave balances by 3/31/2025. I am extremely pi---d and think a lot of folks will self exit. What are y'all's thoughts?!
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I'll try to have faith that my manager(s) have my back.
Unfortunately your managers likely have very little say in what does or doesn't come. It's a blanket amount off the top to fulfill a financial need.
RIF is 99% happening—soon. As others have stated, not having the PTO on the books in tight times results in "cheaper" layoffs. I'm in the trenches, just keeping my head down. I'll try to have faith that my manager(s) have my back. I've never felt less so, but why not have a positive attitude? Good luck to you all. I am hopeful that we can have a less distracting and less stressful 2025.
Drain that accrued sick leave stat!!!!
Layoffs are coming and you won't get paid for it.
You can go into negative hours. They’re allowing it during the transition.
Question for the departments out there - Since our buddies in the EC are demanding all PTO be entered by this Friday... are your departments/leaders saying to add in additional days since we will stop accruing on 9/1?
If you consider 9/1 to 3/31 ... that's a decent chunk of days we would have gained more days. So how are you planning to handle? Thanks
Is this the company’s way of getting to 4-day work weeks
While I do worry for this change to cascade to Sales, where being present is extremely important, I am cautiously optimistic for the change overall. Personally, I am looking forward to more 3 day weekends/holidays and not worrying about "wasting" using vacation time on "slow" days. Time will tell.
I think it's interesting how often people come on here attacking people managers. The power you think they have is kind-of funny. Most of the decisions, like this FlexTO change, were blasted down on all of us from upon high. If you think your middle management had any say in this... you are clueless. They aren't the boogeyman. They likely are attempting to protect you and themselves as the EC continues to destroy any semblance of respect in the rank and file.
Point your anger elsewhere - I assure you the Supervisors, Managers, etc. aren't the bad guy here.
If you're born with the desire to post navel-gazing drivel, you post on TheLayoff as "Bluemangroup."
Soon it will be puckertime for a lot of people leaders who may question their career choice. For those not looking forward to this major change, maybe its time to take stock. You are no better or worse than anyone. A homeless dr-g addict is no better or worse than Marcus Aurelius. Instead, we are just different. We have different characteristics that make us better / worse at specific tasks, but that’s doesn’t reduce our value as a human being.
Your purpose then as a human being is to find your niche. What are you especially suited for? What do you have a competitive advantage in?
If you’re born with Lebron James athleticism, you should likely focus your energy on sports. If you’re born with Mr. Beast’s passion for content creation, you shouldn’t waste your time in accounting class.
What happens if you decide to leave prior to April 1, 2025? Will they still pay out your remaining PTO balance?
I get the selfish reasons why CDW did this, but in the grand scale, who cares? I have a bunch of PTO banked too, but seems people are complaining just to complain
Don’t make the mistake that many conscientious former coworkers did - take sick leave and flex days first, because those don’t get paid out if you leave in that interim period!
I like the general sentiment of your post... but a few notes:
I hate to burst everyone’s bubble here but I can pretty much guarantee none of you are so important that taking a week or two vacation will result in the company burning down.
It's not that any one person will do this. It's that the whole company is going to have a mad dash to burn through all of their PTO before 3/31. On the whole, there can be impacts to ongoing projects if people are panicking about losing accrued time. Sprinkle in holidays and new years? Just makes things increasingly complicated, that's all.
speculation and rumors only lowers morale further
To be honest - they are destroying morale by doing all sorts of things (like this). This FlexTO is just another instance of it. You don't have to fear a layoff to just say, "Do I feel appreciated at my current job?" And if the answer continues to be a resounding 'no'? It will continue to make people upset. They keep chipping away at things that were foundational to the "Coworker First" mentality that many of us working here for years appreciated. Times change, I think everyone gets that, but the way in which they have treated the coworkers over the last 3 years has been a joke. The benefit of loyalty is now gone - everyone gets unlimited? Why stay? Why 'pay your dues', etc. ?
I won't be lied to and asked to appreciate it.
Just take your PTO as you normally would. It’s part of your total compensation package regardless of whether it was accrued or unlimited. I hate to burst everyone’s bubble here but I can pretty much guarantee none of you are so important that taking a week or two vacation will result in the company burning down. Take the time off! You probably need it! Even if it’s not on an actual vacation and it’s just a day or two at home with your family… in my experience with various roles at CDW time off has been flexible regardless if I had the hours banked or not. There were maybe one or two instances in seven years I was called during my time off to help with something specific.
I came from a previous company with unlimited time off and there were no issues from management as long as when you were at work, you did your job. A good rule of thumb is to have one week off per year and scatter another 7-10 days during the months without any paid holidays (Feb-may) to rest and recharge.
I think this is a better policy for coworkers & managers, helps us meet our results, and quite frankly I would rather work somewhere remote with unlimited PTO and make a little less than industry average. This should help us recruit people as well. If it is a foreshadowing of a future lay off or acquisition, we truly have no way of knowing that or controlling it but speculation and rumors only lowers morale further. Come to work, do your job (and do it well), keep your resume up to date and live your life.
For those coworkers who have banked more time than would be possible to take off, I get that it su-ks there is no pay out option. If I were in this situation, I would take a 4 day work week for as many weeks as possible the remainder of the year, and take 2 weeks off the end of December during holiday season, and maybe another week somewhere warm during Q1.
Signed,
Someone who uses every hour of PTO
So we end up losing 7 months of PTO and are forced to burn our existing PTO. Wow. My employment contract says how much PTO I accrue. Seems like they are opening themselves up to lawsuits there.
Final interview next week elsewhere. I just cant do this anymore. I loved my many years here . If I leave I will be taking all of my pto (whats left of it). And wishing my team well.
It's like malicious compliance from CDW. The email said that from the engagement survey feedback "our coworkers appreciate a higher degree of flexibility and control in how they manage and use their time off". It didn't say they wanted "Unlimited PTO". This didn't solve the problem and in fact will make it worse. I don't think most coworkers had issues with the amount of PTO, it was the flexibility given to them in using it. This change potentially gives them even less flexibility.
In general most employees don't want to be seen as the person in the department who takes more PTO than the others, so usually the amount of time off goes down when companies implement unlimited PTO. Also, the longer you've been at CDW the more leave you have accrued. It's really stripping the loyalty benefit away from the long term employees.
I could be making more money elsewhere, but I stayed at CDW long term because I was treated more with more respect than at other firms and the executives didn't play games like this on the scale they do elsewhere. Yes, they did from time to time, but many places were worse. This may be the change that gets me dusting off my resume. The only benefits of FlexTO are to the company. They do not have to pay banked PTO to people who are fired/laid off or quit. They also don't have to account for banked PTO as a liability with investors. It's been a gradual downward slope over the last few years, but FlexTO shows coworkers that the executives have completely stopped caring about them and have become 100% a "shareholders first" organization.
It was policy to cash out vacation at end of employment, not sick.
It was company policy to cash out sick time at retirement.
How? I can’t think of a single state that requires sick pay to be paid out…
Post from TheLayoff.com
This personally hits me to the tune of $20000 in accrued sick time that I was planning on getting when I retired.
Just to back up those saying that "unlimited PTO" is inherently not a great thing - this has been shown in numerous studies to have a net-negative impact on coworker well-being, and in some sets of data showcase that employees with unlimited PTO take 10-30% less time off, leading to increased burn-out. Much of this is due to team and societal normative pressures, direct leadership conflict, and ambiguity around what is "ok" to take off and what is "too much".
I'm not saying this decision was done with nefarious intent. CDW's HR team is definitely aware of the data that I shared above. I'm sure they balanced that against making our financials appear better, and made the decision accordingly on what was more important. As some say - it's not personal, just business.
What CDW HR needs to do when rolling this out is holding toxic leadership accountable when they start to deny PTO asks that would have been "required" to be given if a coworker had accrued those balances. They also need to lay a strong framework out for what is acceptable and what is not. If they do that, then this doesn't NEED to be "Coworkers vs shareholders" - CDW can have their cake and eat it too.
The timeline is ridiculous.....if they actually cared it would be a "hey, you can burn these days, or we'll just pay you out if it's not all used by April 1"......I will be taking my built up days off before then, and you can bet your a$$ I will not be looking at anything CDW related during those days. What joke this place is.
Do I get back the two weeks I’ve taken since then? A shame they are so awful at actually tracking consumption of time off that it has come to this.
Crazy how it starts on April Fools’ Day of this year.
My favorite part is how we stop accruing almost immediately but the unlimited plan doesn’t start until April of 2025. Clearly they are planning for MAJOR layoffs and want to pay as little as possible.
At what point do we say enough is enough and form a union? They keep cutting benefits and refuse to acknowledge that they pay below market. The Company has shifted to a market/financials first, the only way to protect ourselves is through representation.
What is the big deal? If people didn’t hoard time off you wouldn’t even care about this change. Take your time off and be done with it. The problem is most people have the IQ of a child and need specific directions on how to operate on a daily basis
Tell me you lack awareness of the company's intent and the broader sociology of work without telling me.
This will be a net negative to coworkers. It's going to be presented and packaged as a "Congrats on this great benefit! We are flexible". But make no mistake, people will feel more pressure and the management headache to administer this will be significant. Companies that implement this have employees who take less time, on the whole - not more. And telling people "don't hoard" demonstrates you don't understand the complexities of people's lives in which they do this.
This is a wolf in sheep's clothing. But, hey, at least there's less of a balance on the books for those shareholders!
What is the big deal? If people didn’t hoard time off you wouldn’t even care about this change. Take your time off and be done with it. The problem is most people have the IQ of a child and need specific directions on how to operate on a daily basis
Was this just for managers? Who got this email? This seems like a hoax or rumor
Lol, a 'hoax'? Grow up.
It was an email sent to managers/people leaders. If you didn't receive it, that's the reason.
Was this just for managers? Who got this email? This seems like a hoax or rumor
there was no email that came out?!
Having worked for 2 different companies with “unlimited” PTO, I can confirm that without any minimum most employees take less time off. Without an accrual or minimum leave policy, CDW is intentionally failing to set a standard for a reasonable amount of PTO. The unintended consequence will be churning coworkers from the most understaffed/overworked areas of the business because they won’t feel comfortable taking time off and, thus, will burn out even faster.
CDW’s “use it or lose it” PTO was already terrible, but this is even worse. Accrued PTO is part of our compensation package. Eliminating accruals means when coworkers leave (voluntarily or otherwise) they leave with nothing. This is a blow to anyone who banked PTO as an additional buffer in the event of being laid off.
CDW’s sole motivation is to get the financial liability of the leave balances off the books. CDW only cares about “shareholder value” as stated pretty explicitly in any leadership meeting.
Effective four months ago?
Coworker engagement survey: “Our company culture is terrible. It can’t possibly get any worse, right?”
CDW: “Hold my beer”
Im sorry but most of you fools asked for unlimited PTO. It’s not a conspiracy to get rid of old timers. Just go take the PTO you need, when you need it, and quit trying to bank it…
businesses usually do that to remove the accrued PTO from the books. They also do not have to pay you any PTO when they let you go if there is no accrued PTO.
It's this and the post below yours. They want less risk but they also want to hurt those carrying those bigger balances because, on the whole, they are older and more tenured (expensive). Imagine saving up huge amounts of PTO, for whatever valid reason, and then finding out that you have like 6-8 months to immediately burn through it.
A shocking lack of foresight from the company about the ramifications of this choice. Around the holidays and into next year? We are going to have people forced to take huge breaks.
When other companies do this, it normally ends up hurting the employees for a variety of reasons. Here we go...
businesses usually do that to remove the accrued PTO from the books. They also do not have to pay you any PTO when they let you go if there is no accrued PTO.
It’s an obvious effort to get rid of old timers. What do you think about opening a class action lawsuit for age discrimination?