Elevate Employee Experience through Benefits Programs
Does your company have PTO Donation programs?
According to SHRM, these programs can benefit the employer and elevate employee morale and camaraderie. “These employee-friendly programs may also play a role in increasing productivity, reducing absenteeism, and improving recruiting and retention of quality employees.”
Understanding the Purpose of PTO Donations
If you are not familiar with these programs, they allow employees to share their accrued paid time off (PTO) with other employees. Those employees might be experiencing a medical emergency or perhaps a major disaster and don’t have PTO available to them.
I was recently discussing the incredible value of this employee benefit with two colleagues. I’d put this into the economy of kindness category for workplaces.
One of Many Success Stories
This story, which I included in my Economy of Kindness book, still makes me smile.
Claire was my kids’ babysitter when they were young and she was in school. She went on to work as an outpatient Nurse Practitioner of Vascular Surgery at a large hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. Even though she had been in Baltimore for almost a decade, she often felt like an outsider. But that changed when her son Cas was born at 25 weeks of gestation. She told me about a tremendous act of kindness from her colleagues.
After his premature birth, Claire’s boss sent out an email to update her fellow employees about how she and her newborn son were doing. The response was stunning. Knowing that she was only allowed a few weeks of maternity leave, the staff donated PTO to Claire. Together, they donated more than 400 hours of PTO for Claire. This provided 10 weeks of uninterrupted pay.
It was a huge gift and Claire says, “When I received the notification of time off, I was really in disbelief at the generosity of people in my overarching department. Not only had people in my specialty donated, but many people from different surgical specialties who I hardly knew had donated their hard-earned time off. It made me feel so cared for, but also taught me a lesson that going forward I wanted to pass on generosity like this when I learned of people in need.”
Elevating Culture through Community Kindness
A culture of kindness means finding ways that employees can help each other when someone is going through a tough time.
Who has benefitted from PTO donation programs? Join the conversation with us on LinkedIn!
