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I think in practice they are merged to avoid incentives to lie. Every org I have worked at that had separate pools there was widespread lying about being sick.

I think in practice they are merged to avoid incentives to lie. Every org I have worked at that had separate pools there was widespread lying about being sick. Nobody really asked or cared, so in effect they are the same thing. In practice lying was incentivized, and managers that didn't want to be lied to just adopted the policy that your sick days were yours to take for any reason. I don't think this is something that should be legislated. It's really far down on the list to address.

pc86 6y ago
This is why I think a better system is 1) employees get n hours of PTO; 2) sick days don't use PTO; 3) sick days are not explicitly tracked or counted. If you're not completing enough work because you're abusing pseudo-unlimited-PTO-via-sick-days, or you magically get a cold every Friday before a week off, that gets handled by your manager directly. But it doesn't make sense to penalize the 99% of employees who are responsible and honest.
- leetcrew 6y ago
  > If you're not completing enough work because you're abusing pseudo-unlimited-PTO-via-sick-days, or you magically get a cold every Friday before a week off, that gets handled by your manager directly. But it doesn't make sense to penalize the 99% of employees who are responsible and honest. this just sounds like a shitty situation all around. it really sucks to suspect someone / be suspected of something that can't be conclusively proven one way or the other. if you can be fired for being sick too often at convenient times, you don't really have unlimited sick leave in practice.
  - pc86 6y ago
    I think I just didn't explain it well enough. A common refrain against unlimited/untracked sick time is that employees will abuse it to be lazy, and the only way to fix that is to either closely monitor/track sick days used, or have a pool. My point was that if performance is an issue there are ways to address that. And if enough work is getting completed, it doesn't matter how many sick days were taken (so no need to track/have a pool).

pc86 6y ago

This is why I think a better system is 1) employees get n hours of PTO; 2) sick days don't use PTO; 3) sick days are not explicitly tracked or counted. If you're not completing enough work because you're abusing pseudo-unlimited-PTO-via-sick-days, or you magically get a cold every Friday before a week off, that gets handled by your manager directly. But it doesn't make sense to penalize the 99% of employees who are responsible and honest.

leetcrew 6y ago
> If you're not completing enough work because you're abusing pseudo-unlimited-PTO-via-sick-days, or you magically get a cold every Friday before a week off, that gets handled by your manager directly. But it doesn't make sense to penalize the 99% of employees who are responsible and honest. this just sounds like a shitty situation all around. it really sucks to suspect someone / be suspected of something that can't be conclusively proven one way or the other. if you can be fired for being sick too often at convenient times, you don't really have unlimited sick leave in practice.
- pc86 6y ago
  I think I just didn't explain it well enough. A common refrain against unlimited/untracked sick time is that employees will abuse it to be lazy, and the only way to fix that is to either closely monitor/track sick days used, or have a pool. My point was that if performance is an issue there are ways to address that. And if enough work is getting completed, it doesn't matter how many sick days were taken (so no need to track/have a pool).