alt Hacker NewsYou have to manage discretionary PTO. The problem has almost never been people taking too much but taking too little.
At some companies, the directive from the top to management was to make sure people took at least 3-5 weeks of PTO every year. For legal reasons you can't keep official track of this (it will be imputed as accrual) but managers would actively nudge people to take more PTO.
If you proactively manage it, it works pretty well.
> The problem has almost never been people taking too much but taking too little.
The management culture in the US (other places too, but I'm most familiar with the US) is such that any time the employee (particularly ICs/line employees) wants to spend outside of work is automatically considered suspect.
This is because non-management employees are considered to be inherently lazy and constantly seeking to get as much out of the organization as possible for as little work as possible. And when they do work, they're considered to be incompetent and malicious (requiring constant supervision).