Why unlimited PTO may not solve employee burnout

PTO POLICIES: Cameron Yarbrough is the co-founder and CEO of talent development platform Torch Coaching .io, which boasts an unlimited PTO policy — but as much as Yarbrough is confident in Torch's approach to time off, he knows it won't work for every company.

"Ultimately, this is partly psychological," says Yarbrough. "When people feel they have an abundance of something, they tend not to take advantage of it. If something is served up to you as a scarce resource, you likely engage with it more." 

Yarbrough shares that for an unlimited PTO policy to work, leaders need to prioritize taking time off themselves. He shares what employers should consider when establishing their vacation policies.

Read: Get your summer back: How to establish the right PTO policy for your company

GLOBAL BENEFIT STRATEGIES: Bernie C. Knobbe, CEBS, CCP is the head of global benefits and well-being at AECOM , an infrastructure consulting firm with more than 50,000 employees worldwide. Since joining the company in 2014, Knobbe and his team have worked to modernize benefits offerings and focus on holistic well-being, but have also shifted the communications around these programs. They've stripped out technical and confusing terminology and instead focus on easy-to-digest messaging. 

"Benefits professionals are our own worst enemies," Knobbe says. "We don't know how to tell the story well, and there's resistance to change. The traditional benefits way of communicating is very insurance-sounding, or legal and compliance-oriented. But we need to communicate to people as humans and consumers." 

Read: From DEI audits to AI tools, how AECOM personalizes benefits for 50,000 workers

WORKPLACE CULTURE: On her very first day as a Cadet in the United States Army, Roxanne Bras Petraeus remembers being told by her sergeant that as a woman, she should try her best not to do anything else to stand out — that women don't meet the military standard and that really, they shouldn't even be in the armed forces. 

"Then he went right back to logistics," Petraeus recalls. "And it was bizarre, but I didn't think anything else of it."

But the next day, she was called in to the office and asked to confirm the experience, which had been reported by an onlooking female Officer. Petraeus hesitated but ultimately agreed to corroborate the story — "I'm so grateful to this woman for flagging the concern, but there was always the question: Am I going to get in trouble?" — and it would stand as the first and last time she ever reported workplace harassment. But it would inspire her to make it easier for others to come forward. 

Read: Army Cadet to CEO: How this executive aims to end workplace harassment