My sick and vacation are in separate pots, with rollover, and sick leave accumulates indefinitely. Well, maybe not indefinitely, but it is a pretty large amount. Vacation at a cerain point will stop rolling over, but it is a matter of several months worth.

If vacation and personal days both rollover, I'm not sure I see the point of calling them separate things.

ETA: And I'm still pissed we don't actually get official sick days.

Years back we had separate sick and personal days here and you had to take 2 personal days before you could use your sick time. It was obnoxious. When they combined them, everyone was much happier.

I'm taking Christmas week off and the day after New Years off. I've never taken that much time at year end. SO NICE to be out of accounting.

OK, ours are apparently on the fiscal year, not calendar, so that works for me. (Miraculous responsiveness for once!) And our personal days don't roll over, so I'd better remember to take them!

Someone remind me that I should be doing work.

Our personal, sick, and vacation days are all separate but it doesn't matter what order you take them in. Personal days don't roll over so I try to use them early in the year (and then if I need a "personal day" later on I can call it a sick day if I want. They're pretty flexible about that sort of thing.)

We've just got sick days and vacation days. Sick days accumulate up to two weeks and vacation up to eight weeks. Pretty simple system.

I have no idea about how HR deals with personal vs sick days. All I know is that if I call in and say I'm not coming in for XYZ reason, no one says "boo!" But I do try to schedule my own personal days around the days I'm not teaching.

Having been the guy who tracked personal days, sick leave and vacation I can vouch that rolling it all together into PTO and allowing the employees discretion in how to use it is by far the most fair and easiest system to manage.

But a lot of firms and companies think they get an advantage by having sick leave separate that doesn't roll over. That way it's there if a employee needs it, but they don't owe it as a form of compensation on their books.

I worked at one firm that had unlimited accrual of sick leave and vacation until they figured out that it was a financial liability to carry all that on the books. I remember one guy getting a $20,000 cashout (before taxes) of his leave. But that was largely because he was a lobbyist off-site and his "manager" didn't note any of his actual sick days or personal days or whatever. Sweet deal, but that kind of shit happens all the time.

It's best to have straight PTO that caps out at a certain point. Then you can use it to extend maternity leave if needed, or a surgery recovery.

Also, be very clear on your firm's policies about maternity leave because if you don't take the right leave in the right order you can be right screwed.

I don't get paid for my sick leave upon separation. I do for my vacation.