Mary Will Speaks With CNBC on Mandatory Paid Leave

Deputy general counsel and partner Mary Will spoke with CNBC on the possible enforcement of required vacation, or paid leave, by employers to get workaholic employees to take a break.

The article shares that only a small number of employers today — 8.7% — require workers to take a minimum amount of vacation, and some of this is for legal or regulatory reasons. If an employer is going to put mandatory time off policies into place, they must define how many days must be taken off.

Companies also have to be prepared to administer, in a way that’s fair, who gets to take the prime weeks because otherwise you could run into legal troubles or have difficulty with disgruntled and disengaged workers, said Will. Employers must be prepared to manage complaints that “Joe always gets to take the week between Christmas and New Year’s and no one else can and we don’t think that’s fair,” she said.

Will also said, “More companies are also scrapping their unlimited time-off policies, which haven’t always worked out as anticipated. In some cases, employees have abused the policy, but often, they take way less vacation than they did when they had a set number of days. As a result, some employers have gone back or are considering returning to policies where employees only accrue a certain number of days — often two to three weeks per year.”