Dive Brief:
- Longtime employees at Bank of America will get additional weeks of paid time off on top of their usual vacation allotment, says Quartz.
- The company is granting four weeks of added paid leave for investment banking employees with at least 10 years of service. Quartz says the benefit is available once every five years. Workers with at least 20 years on staff will receive five added weeks of paid leave, and those with 35 or more years get six more weeks.
- Employees can spend that time any way they want, Bank of America COO Tom Montag said in an interview, including to "go traveling, pursue a philanthropic project, spend quality time with family, or simply take time out to recharge and refocus.”
Dive Insight:
As generous as it sounds, not many U.S. workers would be eligible for a similarly-worded benefit, should their employers institute it; data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics show that today's workers stay with an employer for 4.4 years on average. While millennials are frequently tagged with the job-hopping stereotype, experts say that the phenomenon isn't necessarily a generational one.
Be it a response to employees' desire for more work-life balance or a talent magnet and retention tool (or both), paid time off is having a moment in the U.S. A 2015 SHRM survey showed paid time off is the benefit employees said they valued most.
But PTO isn't the only way to make your workplace more flexible. Consider integrating more opportunities for remote work, as well as accommodations for parents and those with families. Caregiving benefits are likely to be a popular trend going into 2018, as employers and society in general become gradually more aware of the billions of dollars spent to care for loved ones.