How Much Time Off Should a Dental Associate Get?
What is a reasonable amount of time off for a dental associate? Most places refer to it as PTO or paid time off. And then that encompasses several things. For almost any kind of time off, you have four factors. One is just personal time off vacation, two would be sick days, three would be holidays, and the fourth would be continuing education. And once we lump all of those into one, then we can determine whether it’s reasonable or not. First, let’s just take personal days off. Most of the time, a dentist is going to get somewhere between 10 to 15 vacation days.
If you are a newer dental associate out of training, I’ve seen them go all the way down to five. It’s too low, it’s not enough time. Now, you always have to kind of judge what type of compensation model you’re on versus the time off. For instance, if you’re just on a straight-based salary or in the dental industry, a lot of time, they’ll do a daily rate. Then if you’re not working, you’re not making money if it’s a daily rate. Obviously, if it’s a straight based salary, then you’ll still get paid for the time off. If you’re on productivity compensation model, the less that you’re working, the less money you’ll make. So, even though they may offer you 25 days off total, it doesn’t make sense to take that much time off if your compensation is going to decrease a certain amount. Just one thing to keep in mind.
Somewhere between 10 to 15 days of vacation time is standard. Now, as far as sick days go, this is really the only thing that’s kind of state dependent. Some states have laws in place that require a certain number of days off if they are a full-time employee. For others it’s more open and open to the employer. Usually, 3 days, sometimes 5 is a reasonable amount for sick days. CE, once again, somewhere between 3 to 5 days for continuing education. They should also provide you with a sum of money that goes towards that. Usually, somewhere between 2,000 to 4,000. So, another three to five days for continuing education and then holidays, most dental offices, somewhere between 6 to 7 federal holidays. Let’s just add it all up. Other blogs of interest include:
Let’s say you get 10 days of vacation and 7 federal holidays, so it’s 17. You get 3 CE, that’s 20, and then you get another 3 for sick days. That’s 23. I would say that’s a little on the low side. The total amount that you should be aiming for is somewhere between 28 to 32 days of total time off. So, when you add up all those things, it should be somewhere in there. If you’re getting a job offer that’s significantly less than that, maybe like a total time off of 10 days or 15, it’s really low. Is there negotiating? Certainly, there’s negotiating normally in the vacation part, sick days, holidays, and CEs. Maybe the CE, you can add a day or two, but the vacation part is kind of where you want to look at.
There are also places that use pure PTO, meaning, everything goes into one box and any time off you take, it takes it out of that. What I mean by that is, let’s say the employer allows you to accrue eight hours off every pay period. Well, anytime you’re out, no matter what, they just take the time off that you’ve accrued. So, it really doesn’t matter what the breakdown is between the four sections. It’s just, okay, you get 25 days off, you can do whatever you want with them. I think for some of the larger corporate-owned practices, that might be more likely. It’s rare to find a private dentist-owned practice that uses a pure PTO system. They usually break it down into sections. What are some red flags if they’re offering very little time off? Well, one, they may just not understand the market and it’s probably your job to educate them. Two, when they offer you an unreasonable and low amount of time off, and they’re just completely unwilling to negotiate at all, it might be a red flag that they’re going to be difficult to work with, or maybe they don’t appreciate a work life balance.
I would look long and hard if someone is taking a hard stance about not giving you more time off and what’s the reason behind that. So, that’s kind of, I guess, a breakdown of what’s a normal amount of time off for a dentist and dental associate. Obviously, if you own your own practice or you are a partner, it’s really up to you how much time off you want to take. But as a dental associate, somewhere between 20 to 32 days total time off would be what you’re aiming for.
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