[ghshephard]

Do you work for a company with unlimited vacation? While we have 'unlimited vacation', our sick policies went from no tracking to a limited number of sick days per year.

After being on it for a year, I would prefer to go back to the 'guaranteed 12 days a year'

[dworin]

I own my own company now, but I've worked at both companies with unlimited vacation and those with a set number of days. Allowing unlimited vacation but tracking sick days seems strange - how do you define the difference, and why do they care?

I've also found that once you're in a system, change makes it worse even if it's too a better system. If you go from unlimited to a set amount, you feel like someone has now capped your time and is watching you (even if the cap is so high you would never hit it). If you had a set number of days and they switch to unlimited, you feel like now you don't have a guaranteed amount of vacation. The loss aversion is really strong.

[ghshephard]

We went from "Unlimited Sick Days" to a set amount, and the general reaction was, "How on earth could anybody require so many sick days." (Answer, the number is the dividing line between, "Sick Days" and "Short term disability")

On the flip side, when you have a set amount of vacation, there is a nice "target" for you to take, with a hard number appearing on your paycheck every two weeks reminding you.

[Simucal]

That seems like an odd thing to do when employees have unlimited vacation time. "Oh, I'm out of sick days? I'll just take a vacation day then."

[ghshephard]

Vacation needs to be negotiated in advance with your manager, and you need to make sure all your projects are taken care of. In theory, your manager can't deny you a sick day, and they don't need to be negotiated.