my company says no one can take any time off for a full year

A reader writes:

I work in healthcare IT. Recently, our organization made the decision to switch to a new Electronic Medical Record (EMR) system. I, along with dozens of colleagues, are responsible for building this new EMR to meet our organization’s needs. It’s a months-long process that involves lots of coordinated decision-making across the entire organization. The tentative go-live date for this new system is well over a year from now.

Our leadership is telling the entire IT department that no PTO requests will be approved during this time.

None of this has been communicated to the department en masse, but it has trickled down to managers, who then relay it to their respective teams. The message from my manager has been, “No PTO will be approved.”

When I asked about booking a vacation this summer, the response was, “The go-live date is [specific 2027 date].”

Since then, I’ve confirmed that no PTO means no PTO. They’ve said they might be able to grant a day off here or there, depending on project needs. But those decisions would only be made closer to the dates we would want to take off.

I have a spouse and small children. The thought of zero vacation for over a year seems really awful to me.

(I do think this is only about vacation and not sick time. I don’t think they’re saying if we get sick that we can’t take time off. And we are salaried, so we have been told that we can generally flex our schedules to go to one-off appointments without using PTO. But PTO for vacations is a no-go. )

Many folks in our department are quietly seething, but it doesn’t seem like anyone is willing to bring it up in a large group.

Is this something that my company can do? PTO is a part of our compensation package, and we accrue leave every pay period. I am new to this organization, so it’s entirely possible that I am way off-base in thinking that this is a bizarre policy.

No, this is absurd.

The idea that people should work a full year through with no time off to recharge is ridiculous.

And no one can attend a family wedding? A funeral? Be at the birth of their grandchild? All trips of any sort for the year are off the table?

Legally, in most states, they can probably do it. California is the exception to that, because California treats vacation time as earned wages and prohibits extreme black-out periods that prevent you from having practical access to the time off.

Assuming you’re not in California, the best thing you and your coworkers can do is to push back as a group, pointing out that this is an unacceptable restriction on your use of earned benefits and a massive hit to very routine quality-of-life expectations, that you have lives and commitments outside of work, and that it’s in the organization’s best interest to have well-rested and recharged employees.

You said no one seems willing to do that, but why? This is an incredibly normal thing for a group of employees to take issue with and push back on … and if you don’t, you’re going to be stuck with no vacation for a year. Create some friction for your company and make it harder for them to do this. There’s a very good chance that if you push back as a group, they’ll budge.

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