Now You Can Benefit From All Your Unused Vacation Days
American workers are shunning time off, with 658 million of their vacation days going unused in 2015. But with the help of a new startup, those workers can tap the value of their unused days to use towards everything from travel, contributions to their 401(K) and even donations to charity.
PTO Exchange Co-Founder Rob Whalen weighed in on how the company works with employers to give their employees alternative ways to utilize their unused vacation days.
“So, PTO Exchange actually, we integrate with the accrual payroll of most companies and then we allow employees to utilize the unused benefit for exchange for goods, services or experiences. And the policy is driven by the employer himself,” Whalen told the FOX Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo.
According to Whalen the regulatory issues were a major obstacle.
“Obviously there is a lot of regulatory issues and I think the first two years we spent having to learn those so we could build a platform and an application that would actually service the enterprise right. So, there are rules and regulations, you have to abide by them, our platform allows you to do that. But, the policy is actually set up by the employer.”
Whalen then explained the company’s business model and how it monetizes its relationship with employers and their employees.
“Yeah, so we make money pretty simply right, we charge $1 per employee per month – so it’s a PEPM model – and then we charge 3% per transaction…And the 3% could actually be, you could actually put that off to the employee or the employer depending on how you’d like to drive that.”