Pear Adds Cash Flexibility to PTO Benefits

Pear, a platform that offers flexible employee benefits, is targeting 25,000 employees by the next open enrollment period with a model that adds cash flexibility without touching banked Paid Time Off (PTO). The company is working with employers across various sectors, including manufacturing, retail, financial services, and healthcare, to onboard approximately 25,000 eligible employees to its platform.

Under the new model, an employee expecting to earn 120 hours of PTO next year might choose to keep 40 hours available as traditional time off and elect the value of 80 hours as cash. As those hours are earned, the elected portion is converted to cash through Pear, subject to applicable payroll taxes and withholdings. Previously banked PTO remains untouched, and employees receive the full value of the portion they elect, with zero conversion fee.

The scale of the opportunity is significant. Vacation Tracker reported in 2026 that 62% of U.S. employees do not use all of their PTO, representing an estimated $312 billion in unused vacation value. Industry research cited by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) found that the average U.S. employee holds approximately $2,953 in unused accrued vacation.

For Pear, the bigger issue isn’t simply unused PTO. It’s lack of flexibility.

Pear’s platform allows employees to choose how they want to use their PTO, whether as time off or as cash, giving them more control over their benefits. Benefits leaders are being asked to improve employee experience, retention, and financial wellness while managing cost and complexity. Pear provides a new way to do this without simply adding another benefit. Employees gain more choice within a benefit the company is funding, while HR maintains control over eligibility, election limits, and program rules. Pear is designed without a monthly recurring platform fee, creating a differentiated employee experience without replacing the employer’s existing PTO program.

For CFOs, Pear creates greater financial predictability. Accrued PTO can become a growing financial obligation as balances accumulate and the timing of future use or payouts remains uncertain. Because Pear elections happen in advance, finance teams gain earlier visibility into how much future PTO is expected to remain as time off and how much will be converted to cash. That creates a more structured planning model and can support better expense planning, stronger cash forecasting, and greater control over PTO-related obligations. In certain scenarios, Pear helps to reduce liability and reduce taxable income.

For employers, the result is a benefit that can serve two very different priorities at once: a more flexible employee experience for HR and a more predictable financial model for Finance. For employees, it is much simpler. More choice over how one of their most valuable benefits fits into their life.

Pear is starting with PTO, but the vision is much bigger: a world where employee benefits are as flexible as the lives they’re meant to support. Because when people have more choice, they have more freedom to respond to life, and when one person moves forward, the impact rarely stops with them.