This is how you work the system.
Experts have revealed the clever PTO hacks that maximize time off — sometimes, even doubling the number of vacation days.
The method to maximizing paid time off, which has gone viral online, is to schedule vacations around holidays, such as Memorial or President’s Day.
“Federal holidays and long weekends are your best friend here,” Jesse Neugarten, CEO and founder of Dollar Flight Club, told Forbes.
“If you time it right, you can turn just 15 PTO days into over 50 days off in a year.”
For instance, according to HuffPost, take the Friday off before a Monday holiday – like President’s, Memorial or Labor Day — to score an extra long weekend.
Similarly, federal holidays like Independence Day, Thanksgiving and Juneteenth fall on Thursdays, so taking the following day off will also result in a four-day weekend.
Neugarten also recommended taking time off in December, telling Forbes that it’s easier to score extra time off around the holiday season.
For instance, using PTO during Christmas and New Year’s could allow workers to take two weeks off without using up much of their allotted time off.
The holiday hack coincides with a recent survey from the travel company Contiki, which found that workers aged 18 to 35 felt that they did not have enough time off to take an extended trip.
Contiki — which offers a calendar generator to help users make the most of their PTO — also found that 56% of people polled would choose more PTO over a pay raise.
Experts warned, however, that it could be poor workplace etiquette to take off every single day that borders a holiday.
“Booking key dates all at once may exclude those staff members who might not have the same flexibility in their schedule,” Carolyn Walker, Tenth Revolution Group’s global human resources director, told Forbes.
Some employees with the flexibility of working remote will also “work from home” from an entirely different location. In extreme cases, the trend, known as “quiet vacationing,” has resulted in a rare few workers getting a month-long trip without using up much of their paid time off.
Bonnie Dillber, a recruiting manager at Zapier, said she will sometimes work remote from somewhere else in the world in order to ration her PTO.
“Because I work remotely, I will sometimes work a day or two from another destination,” she told HuffPost. “For example, I may spend 10 days visiting family adjacent to a federal holiday to get two weekends out of the trip ,but work two of those days, which can mean using just three days of PTO.“
