If an employee was hired with a certain benefit agreement re: sick and vacation, and we want to change to a pto policy, is it best to grandfather in new employees to the pto or just do it for everyone?

Nobody here can give you a definitive answer because we don't know anything about your workplace, company policies, employee relations climate, etc. I can tell you that I have designed and implemented PTO policies and implemented it for ALL employees.

As an employer, you are free to change your policies any time you wish. Administering one set of paid time off policies for one group of employees and something different for the new hires will be an administrative nightmare for HR and payroll. Plus you'll have employees on both sides of the policies *****ing about the other group getting a better deal. My personal recommendation would be to do it for everyone. Just be sure to have a sound and through communication plan.

Thanks Beth - I guess I just wanted to know if you could change someone's benefits from what the benefit agreement was when they were hired. I figured it was an internal policy issue but thought maybe there might be some law on this. I mean - can you hire someone under an employement agreement that includes vacation benefits and then just say a year later "we changed our minds (read: policies) no more vacation benefits." ????

If you have a written employment contract or agreement in place, get your legal counsel's advice before changing anything.

Depends on what you mean by, employment agreement. If you're talking about what was in the offer letter and your employee handbook, it's about 99.9999999% sure you can change it any time you like. If you're talking about an honest to goodness CONTRACT, you'd better have your corporate counsel check it out.