I was reading The Wall Street Journal recently and came across an article about “pawternity leave” — time off specifically to tend to a new or sick pet. Apparently it is a new workplace perk. The New York City Council co-sponsored a bill last month that would let nongovernment workers employed in the city use their paid sick time for pet-related medical care.

My first reaction was to scoff at the employee benefit. Time off for pet care? What’s next?

The employer-employee relationship is a delicate dance. As an employer, you need that employee and their hard work. As an employee, you need that job to pay your bills. The push and pull between the two is increasingly difficult to navigate, as we’ve seen with the ongoing negotiations over hybrid work and time in the office.

Let’s get beyond the debate over hybrid work and return to office mandates. What we are seeing is a much broader workplace issue: Employees’ demand for work-life balance. What is  reasonable to dedicate to work and what is reasonable to dedicate to personal time? That equation is different for every individual — and therein lies the problem.

I’m more than happy to check out my emails after “official” work hours are over where others might find that a major intrusion into their personal time. Some might think answering an after-hours email is an attack on their at-home time while others think nothing of it. We are all different when it comes to work-life balance.

Even well-intentioned policies might not have the desired effect. For example, our company has an unlimited vacation policy. When you need time off, you take it, which is an incredibly generous perk. Unfortunately, it has the opposite effect on me. Since I have unlimited vacation time, I take almost none. I’m not good at taking vacations and if it isn’t spelled out in a two- or three-week defined benefit, I don’t use it. It doesn’t make sense, I know, but that’s the way I’m wired.

The debate over employee expectations and benefits is all wrong. Instead of debating the details, such as how many sick days or pet sick days or school plays we want to attend, the best employer-employee relationships begin with trust — and a hefty dash of common sense. If you need personal time off, you should be able to take it. If you abuse the flexibility, you should expect to lose that freedom.

As an employer, you should understand that a flexible workplace will be watched closely by your workers. Employees will watch how much time other people take off and will get irritated if they feel they are pulling their weight in the office but a co-worker is not.

Benefits, including time off, ebb and flow with the economy. When the economy is booming, so are the benefits and employee perks offered. We are reaching the breaking point for employers who feel they have given up a lot of workplace control since the pandemic. There are signs companies are beginning to dial back pet-related benefits. After rising in recent years, the number of employers offering pet insurance fell to 13% in 2024 from 16% in 2023, according to a MetLife survey of more than 2,500 companies.

And while we debate the value of sick time off for pets, it is important to understand that about 25% of private industry workers in the U.S. have no paid sick time at all. That means if they get sick, they are out any money they would have made.

Instead of mandates and policies about paid time off, maybe we should begin with a little compassion and common sense. If a worker needs to be off work for a valid reason, they should be able to take paid time off. And for some workers, that might mean time off when Fido has his annual veterinary exam.