Csdrhrt

Can an employer pay employees a bonus in PTO / Vacation time, instead
of money?

Yes, they can. One of my best friends works for a major health care service provider in Atlanta, and when the quarterly sales goals were blown away, an additional PTO day was awarded to everyone involved.

Two caveats, one this is a USA based answer, and two these were all salaried employees. Definitely not a one answer fits all, but to answer the question it does happen. YMMV

Yes, that is definitely possible.

For example, in the UK it is fairly common to allow employees to buy (or sell) a small number of leave days, in addition to the standard annual leave. From there, it is very easy to award those extra leave days as a bonus, instead of having to pay for them.

Employers can (within reason) offer any incentives they like.

Whether your specific employer would allow it is a separate question entirely.

Your best bet is to talk to whoever determines/approves your bonus, and ask whether you can convert it into PTO instead.

You may want to think about how this company works out their compensation. Even if you change the type of reward, it's not a benefit if the measurement of work and amount of reward are not managed well.

Yes, it's possible and legal, but there's a lot of evidence in the US that people are not using their time off. You say you would think time-off would be a reward, but in some company cultures, you can be punished for taking too much. You would have to determine if that is a risk in your situation or not.

It seems your current reward system suffers from a lack of proportion or perception of being able to make it. There's a chance you could put in 10% more work for 1% more pay. Most people would like a little more of a guarantee. The company may not be in a position to make any promises. We all know more work can be done but have no additional revenue to show for it. Are you really going to work 10% harder for a quarter just to get an extra day or two off? Then there is the long-term burn-out factor. What's the point of an extra day off if it barely allows you to recover from the extra work?

Can an employer pay employees a bonus in PTO / Vacation time, instead
of money?

Yes. In the US at least, an employer can hand out a bonus in any form they choose. I know of some employers who get very creative about their bonuses - paid trips, tickets to concerts, even automobiles.

You could ask your employer for time off in lieu of money, but most employers will adhere to whatever bonus structure they already have in place. It's hard to make every employee happy, and letting everyone choose the form of their bonus may be too hard for the company to decide to accommodate.

But the only way to know is to ask.

In addition, you might wish to chat with HR about your feelings regarding the current bonuses and motivation. Most HR departments review their practices annually. A bit of input from you might help.

My company has such a system, and it is amazing.

We have our time sheets where we also write down our overtime, and it is carried over through months, so basically adding up all the time. At any time we can freely choose to use our overtime hours for leaving work earlier (h/h), cash it out (€/h) or use them as a day off (day/8h).

In reality, its not a bonus as all these hours are done work, but its very convenient because I can "save" my time when I was lets say more motivated to work, and use them when I just want to go home early, get more pay, or take a day off.

On the employer part, clients are charged more money for the overtime than for regular time, and we do a lot of overtime because we simply want to. So its basically a win-win situation.

You could maybe propose the same system to your employer.

While to you the money to day ratio may seem one rate, to the company it's maybe a very different rate. In almost every case, your work is worth more to the company than what they pay you. So if you make $2000 a week, your value to company would be over $3000 a week. So while it may be offered, it would not be at a rate that the employee would want.

So, yes they could, but the trade-off will be disappointing. Also a company may be reluctant to let the employee know their value in exact terms to the company.

I think I'd be much more motivated if the bonus could be something non-monetary; For example, additional vacation days.

If you can take unpaid time off, then you can always convert a bonus (e.g. a week's wage) into PTO by taking the same period as unpaid time off:

1 week's wage + 1 week unpaid time off = 1 week PTO

In your comment it seems as if the company always has you take your PTO before any UTO.

I can't comment as to the legality of that; but I can tell you that mathematically, that's the same as if you'd first take your UTO and then PTO (and it's even slightly in your financial benefit to get the money faster, because of accrued interest, assuming it's higher than inflation).

Can an employer offer PTO/Vacation time as a bonus?

As a general, yes they can.

But Kate Gregory is correct that it's generally easier to give your employees more money than it is to have them be absent.

Mathematically, it shouldn't make a difference. For example, if your company hired five people to work one day of the week (all getting paid the same hourly rate), that's mathematically the same as hiring the same person for 5 days (and the same hourly rate).

However, these 5 people will underperform compared to the one employee, because the 5 people will spend a lot of time doing knowledge transfar and figuring out what the other guy did.

This is why it's harder to deal with your absence (and effectively pay someone else to do the job you'd be doing), because this person needs to get up to speed and then you need to be brought up to speed when you return. That takes time, which costs money.