Unpaid vacation as a way to save the Company money

[Guest Gailnyc]

My company is going to institute an option whereby employees can elect to take unpaid time off. The way this will work is that the employee will elect to take between 4 hours and 1 week as time off above and beyond our vacation policy allowance. We calculate the cost of this additional time off and reduce their gross wages by this amount so that the cost of the elected time off is prorated over the calendar year (our legal counsel determined that this is not a Section 125 program). The main purpose of this is to save the company money but also respond to employee requests for more time off.

I'm looking for some advise on how to administer and communicate this type of program. Any words of advice?

[E as in ERISA]

Try entering "purchase additional vacation" (in quotes) as a search term on a search engine like Yahoo! (that recognizes phrases in quotes). You should find some links to sample statements on HR web sites (and some links to timeshare sites).

[Mary C]

We're a nationwide company that has seasonal fluctuations in our workforce needs and have utilized a similar program that we call "Voluntary Time Off" or VTO instead of layoffs. May not be exactly like what you are doing, but our employees like it.