"How Many PTO Days Do I Have?" — Why This Question Is Killing Your HR Team

If you work in HR at a SaaS company, you've probably answered this question today. Maybe twice. Maybe seven times. Maybe you've lost count.

"How many PTO days do I have left?"

It's not a hard question. It's not a sensitive question. It's not even a question that requires human judgment. And yet, here you are, pulling up Rippling for the 47th time this week to tell someone they have 12 days left.

This is not what you signed up for.

The Hidden Cost of "Quick Questions"

Let's do some math that will make you want to cry (or maybe validate the crying you're already doing):

• Average time to answer a PTO balance question: 3-5 minutes (including context switching, looking it up, typing the response, and the inevitable follow-up)
• Average number of PTO questions per week for a 100-person company: 15-25
• That's 75-125 minutes per week — or roughly 2 hours — spent on a question that literally has a number as the answer

Now multiply that across a year. That's over 100 hours annually — two and a half full work weeks — spent copying numbers from one screen to another.

But wait, it gets worse.

The Context-Switching Tax

The real killer isn't the 3 minutes it takes to answer. It's the 23 minutes it takes to get back to whatever you were actually working on.

Studies show that after an interruption, it takes an average of 23 minutes to fully return to a task. So that "quick PTO question" isn't costing you 3 minutes. It's costing you 26 minutes.

Every. Single. Time.

Now do that math again and try not to flip a table.

Why Employees Keep Asking (It's Not Their Fault)

Before we go further, let's be clear: your employees aren't trying to annoy you. They're asking because:

1. Your HRIS is confusing. They logged in once, couldn't find it, and gave up.
2. They're not sure which balance matters. Accrued? Available? Pending? Carryover?
3. You're faster than figuring it out. Slack you → get answer in 2 minutes. Self-serve → ??? → frustration → Slack you anyway.
4. They've forgotten the HRIS exists. They use it during onboarding and then never again.

The problem isn't your employees. The problem is that asking you is the path of least resistance.

The Domino Effect

PTO questions are just the gateway drug. Once employees realize you're faster than the HRIS, the floodgates open:

• "Hey, does our dental cover Invisalign?"
• "What's the policy on working from another country?"
• "When do I become eligible for 401k matching?"
• "How do I add my spouse to my insurance?"
• "Can you remind me how to submit expenses?"

Before you know it, your entire job becomes human-HRIS-interface. You're not doing HR anymore — you're a search engine with feelings.

Why "Just Google It" Doesn't Work

You've tried everything:

• Wiki pages — they get outdated, and nobody reads them
• Notion docs — buried under 47 other pages
• Pinned Slack messages — lost in the noise after a week
• FAQ documents — lol

The reality is that static documentation doesn't work because employees don't want to search. They want answers. There's a difference.

The Real Solution: Make Asking Someone Else Easier Than Asking You

The only way to escape the PTO question purgatory is to give employees something that's:

1. Faster than messaging you
2. Available 24/7 (unlike you, who deserves to log off)
3. Actually accurate (no outdated wiki pages)
4. In the tools they already use (Slack, Teams, etc.)

This is exactly why we built Deb.

What Your Day Could Look Like

Imagine this: It's 9:30 AM. You're working on that compensation analysis that's been on your to-do list for three weeks. Someone has a PTO question.

But instead of pinging you, they ask Deb.

Deb checks their balance in Rippling, tells them they have 12 days, and asks if they want to submit a request. They say yes. Deb submits it and notifies their manager.

You never even know it happened. You keep working on that analysis. You finish it before lunch. You feel like a functioning human being.

That's the dream. And it's possible.

The Bottom Line

PTO balance questions aren't hard. They're just frequent. And frequency without automation equals burnout.

You became an HR professional to work with people, not to be a human database lookup. Every minute you spend answering "how many days do I have?" is a minute you're not spending on recruiting, culture, employee development, or literally anything that requires human judgment.

The question isn't whether you should automate this. It's why haven't you already.

Ready to reclaim your time? Check out Deb — she actually reads PTO balances so you don't have to.