About Mandatory Leave ... and the futility of one-size-fits-all approaches

Just to provide the reader with a context - I'm leading a team of 10 in an organization of 400 that reports into a bigger organization of 3,000. Now, amid all this COVID-19 non-sense our top brass has looked at the numbers and have surmised that

• the numbers do not accurately reflect the loss of productivity due to COVID-19
• Of course they don't since 'productivity' is being measured from an accounting point of view instead of an efficiency angle
• nobody is taking vacation leading to a risk that the entire organization is going to go on PTO at the same day towards the end of year when the restrictions are lifted
• Of course they don't since staycation is a lot less desirable under the circumstances and tourism is temporarily(?) on hold.

So these exceedingly smart people have come to the solution that they shall issue a policy that everybody (i.e., the 3,000 employees) shall take at least 5 PTO days between mid March and late May. Note that this was actually issued without any consultation and out-of-the-blue halfway into  April which yet again shows and reinforces the belief that management is on top of things. Note furthermore that we are in the United States of America in this context, so people don't have 30+ PTOs like in Europe, the number is closer to 15. Of course, nobody is willing to bear responsibility for anything, so they had to put a sentence into their communication stating that all this of course shall have no impact on customer projects and thus certain people may be exempt from this policy at the discretion of their management. Which of course at the "working level" translates into: "I have deadlines, this shit doesn't apply to me." And rightfully so, since in this penny pinching capitalist life that we live there's of course absolutely no slack in the organization, everybody's workload (on average) hovers around a 120% and then the very same management gets their panties in a bunch when there are cost overruns (since planning obviously assumes that this is in fact less than 100%).

Anyway, I digress. So let's get back to the beginning - my team of 10. So in this small team, just the known 'exceptions':

• One of my employees is planning to get married and go on a honeymoon next year so of course they are hoarding PTO days and want to utilize the maximum number of carry over into next year.
• Another one will become a grandparent in June and plans to take many more days than what is being required, but of course that falls outside of the designated (and I'm sure precisely defined) time interval.
• And since this is the US, one of my team members who extended their New Year's vacation to get out of the cold and soak up the sun south of the equator will have to travel abroad this year at some point (on their own time and money) to extend their visa so that they can continue to work for me.

Extrapolate that to the level of 3,000 people, add in the project-related difficulties and you can start to understand why there is an uproar on the "working level".

It's not like the problem definition of the top-brass is wrong. It's actually spot on and it is something that does need to be managed. However, those in the ivory tower made a decision to my knowledge without consulting anybody who lives outside of it to address it and came to a subpar conclusion. It is the nature of the ivory tower that every step somebody takes towards becoming the tenant removes them one step from the realities. And it's a long journey.