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Can you negotiate PTO at annual review?
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I never bring my work laptop on vacation.
Don’t reply. You are out of office. Sometimes
People send meeting request to groups and don’t pay attention who is out. Don’t respond to those. I get my email on my phone, so it’s nice if there is a real emergency, I can respond. (But you’re an accountant. There are no real accounting emergencies. No one is going to die.) And since im checking things, I’m not sorting thru 200 emails when I get back. If you made the error or dropped the ball, then of course fix it on your PTO if you can. But then don’t bill that time to PTO. And of course, you can always say “I’m at my mom/friend/grandmother/mistress’s house painting the ceiling and my laptop is at my house. I can’t look at that until I get home tomorrow”
Rising Star
Oof, you are making it easy for them to take advantage of you. I pretty much announce a week or two before that I’ll be on vacation. And I’ll keep bringing it up. And i set OOO auto response. Then I don’t turn my laptop on and turn my work phone off. Works great, and I still got promoted
I’m out of office for the next 2 weeks starting tomorrow. Laptop will be left at home and email on the phone will be ignored. Just remember, as the late great Sir Billy Joel once said, “there is never an accounting emergency”.
They keep asking you to do stuff because you keep doing it for them 😂 you gotta be the one to stop the cycle my man/woman
I would never expect a staff to respond to an email or attend a meeting while on PTO. If I needed a partner to finalize a proposal then maybe I would contact their cell phone if they are on PTO but that’s why they make the big bucks. Your PTO is your time to recharge. Don’t ever feel like you HAVE to work on your PTO. It would never hinder your career. If it does then you are at the wrong firm.
I don’t care if you’re traveling the world or sitting at home picking your nose, your PTO is yours to do with as you wish. If you’ve had this booked beforehand and your team knew that, they should respect it. If you want to sit at home watching tv then that is for you to decide and not for your team to dictate or make you feel guilty.
“I am out of office until _______. I will respond to emails upon my return.” That’s it, no further explanation needed.
100% ignore assuming you took the proper steps beforehand to notify your superiors that you would be out. Pretend you didn’t see them because lack of service and enjoy your time off.
Kill them. Just kidding, murder is wrong. But in all honesty - put the laptop away, phone on dnd and if they raise hell when you come back - ask them if they want to work the next time they take PTO.
A senior manager once told me - “PTO is meant for people at work to recognize your absence and know that they rely on your skills to keep projects moving, if they don’t, it means they don’t need you in the engagement”. And I took that by heart and always only respond to texts or calls from clients/managers when I’m on PTO.
If you had cleared vacation with all teams and told them in advance and had it on your calendar and you have your out of office on, just ignore them. They’ll realize it when they get your out of office. If they’re asking you to do stuff on vacation it’s probably because they forgot you were out but just let your out of office remind them. If they know and they’re asking you, it’s because you keep doing stuff for them. Stop that.
I literally delete my messenger app on my phone and turn off my emails. My team is given my cell phone number and can call if urgent. I have not once in my entire career had anyone call.... it took me a while to learn this and it is so important. You need the time off for your sanity and to disconnect
Definitely ignore everything.
If it’s important people will call me. I never wanna open my laptop on PTO
Ignore them all. It helps to have a main contact on the team who will text you only in a dire emergency. Otherwise it’s your time off take the break.
Right EY7! No one is going to die if we don't respond until Monday.
This only happens when you don’t communicate that you are on vacation.
This was communicated. During the planning stage of the audit, we discuss all our vacations. I am on multiple clients, and they also know my schedule year-round. As soon as my PTO gets approved, I immediately have my calendar blocked out as out of office. Friday before my PTO, I have my automatic responses set up. Before I go on PTO or roll off to another client, I have a meeting with the engagement manager to discuss everything I've completed, and what tasks need to be allocated while I'm gone. If that's not enough communication for you, then please do share your knowledge.
Set times to check emails and stick to those times. This way they know when to expect answers and are not emailing you all day.
That time is the Monday you get back. Full stop. There is no staff or senior that that holds the keys to the kingdom that will hold up your engagement. If you are a manger or above emailing a staff/senior on their PTO, in all but the rarest imaginable situations (in which case, I leave my cell in my OOO) it’s because you don’t want to do it yourself, not that you can’t. PTO is a clear separation of work and life; to ask someone to punch in during their leave isn’t the work charge-hour definition of my time is more valuable than yours. This is a statement of “I think I matter more than you.” We all have a finite time in this life and no matter the disparity in rank, no person’s time here is worth more than another’s.
And FWIW, I’ve had the managers who expect the on-call, answer email even on vacation as a staff/senior. You better believe in the weeks ahead I am going to slow walk my role just to ‘eff with you. Still get my stuff done, and well, just *slightly* not as efficiently as you wanted. You want me at my best? Then let me get back to my best.
Anything administrative, staffing, training, etc. - I will straight up ignore. Client stuff is a different story depending on the situation. The more senior you are, the more flexible you may need to be to truly succeed in the position. This is a hard fact of any consulting/client service gig.
5pm the day before. They’ll survive without you. Respect your own time and they’ll learn to do the same
If you don’t even respect your time why do you expect others to respect it?
At all points
Always ignore.
I make sure people who need me urgently have a contact to look after things, and they have the method to get in touch with me if it is an absolute emergency.
I use things like share drives and make sure my work is easy to follow so someone else can pick it up.
Then I return the favour with my team members when they go away. I’m SA level in TS but I’ve had my SMs and M go on holiday and the whole team / myself will cover (up to director level)
If you are the direct relationship holder (mostly partner) that is a different case. You getting paid to be at the clients beck and call.
The entire time