TULSA, Okla. — Cameron Grey is spending his PTO on a bike ride at River Parks and planning something even bigger: the first two straight weeks off in his working career.
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“I don’t really take a ton of PTO,” Grey said. “I think throughout the years I’ve typically been in a management role, so I always felt like I had a lot more responsibility than a lot of people. But now I’m not in a management role, so I’m feeling like I’m gonna take advantage of that.”
Grey, who works at Google in Pryor, is marking his 50th birthday and the nation’s 250th birthday with the extended break.
“I’m pretty excited about that,” Grey said.
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He’s not alone in eyeing some time off. A Paycom survey shows Independence Day is the No. 1 personal time off request of the summer, with 63% of employees wanting to use PTO around the holiday.
But the same survey reveals a disconnect between workers and their managers. 60% of managers say employees give them less than a month’s notice when requesting time off, while more than 90% of employees expect their requests to be approved regardless of how far in advance they submit them.
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“Which, as you can assume, could create issues in the workplace, ensuring that you have proper bench and people in place to keep the business running,” Jason Bodin with Paycom said. “In fact, 50% of managers say that they are concerned with the employees being out on PTO during that time frame.”
Bodin said a cause of the tension revolves around many companies simply not having clear PTO policies or not communicating them effectively to employees.
“Based on what we’ve seen with a number of different clients and prospects and just businesses in general, a number of organizations do not have clear policies that they’re following, or they have not communicated those policies out to their employees to where they’re visible, whether that be in the HR and payroll technology that they have or not,” Bodin said. “What we see as the best course of action, as the best recommendation for employers, is to automate that, so ensuring that you have the proper policy in place.”
Grey said most workers learn PTO rules during the hiring process, but that information often doesn’t always stick.
“I would say it’s probably a topic that’s typically not revisited, and most people have to either learn from their coworkers or consult with managers, but I would say it’s extremely common for them to kind of not know specifically,” Grey said.
Grey’s own PTO process is automated through a management system, something he said takes the guesswork out of approval.
Bodin told 2 News Oklahoma that clear policies and automation are an advantage when managers determine whether to approve or deny time off requests.
“Managers don’t have to worry about, well, what was the rule for tenure? Do I give tenured employees first time off abilities, or do I have to look at how many time off requests they’ve had this year?” Bodin said. “There are many things that go into the equation whenever you’re a manager looking at approving time off, and if you can automate that through technology through the policies that you built, then you’re set up for success.”
Lastly, Bodin encourages managers to make sure employees know why a PTO request is approved or denied. Bodin told 2 News that it is important for both employee morale and on-the-job engagement.
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
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