Companies in America and UK (Virgin) have implemented the idea of employees having unlimited holidays. At the surface it seems people are left to manage themselves and not fit in the 9 to 5 box that is typical in the work place. http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/238402 Personally I had a somewhat small taste of something similar to this. One working situation I was involved in basically allowed me within reason, to come in when I wanted in the mornings. This really suited me. My boss at the time recognised the fact that I still got the work done regardless of when I came to work. When the load was heavy I was still there longer than prescribed crunching away getting things done. Ultimately he focussed on the end results, he didn't care how or when they were accomplished. It was clear to him that what made me happy at work meant I got things done which in turn made him happy. Regardless of when I came in I always did my full set of hours. With my current situation my boss gets his panties in a twist when things go outside prescribed parameters of working hours. All too happy to get up in my face if I'm not exactly on time but also never around to tell me to go home when things run on after hours. My work can have peaks and troughs and everywhere in between. There have been times I have been chained to my desk with nothing to do. Being there was a complete waste of my time. Whether I was there or not, I would have cost the company the same amount and they would have made the same amount of profit from me (nothing, well less than nothing). I could have been doing something else productive rather than simply sitting at my desk finding busy work to do. But I had to keep up the pretence of earning that days wage. I always want to shout at people queuing up at a clock machine, waiting for that minute digit to change. "IT DOESN'T MATTER" "YOUR DOING NOTHING" "JUST GO!" Of course I can't and they won't. But the absurdity of the situation always gets to me. Trust and autonomy are two massive things when it comes to being happy at work. Unlimited paid holidays I think is a large step in that regard. People work when they need to, they don't when they don't. They can balance their personal lives more easily and the strange thing is. Work still gets done. More and more, minor elements of trust and autonomy have been stripped from my position. Nothing drastic, but it still hits hard and it really demotivates. I'm curious of what managers, business owners, and employees of the forums think.
There are a lot of places in the US that have done unlimited vacation. My brother has it at his software company. The thing about it is that it's generally done at places where the people do creative work and can get burned out. Often, these people are driven and enjoy their work, so many people end up taking less time off than if they had some "two weeks per year" policy. There's also the issue that "unlimited vacation" is often stipulated against "when there isn't a big deadline," which never happens, so people never get time off. Finally, there's the guilt and worry in a team environment that you take six weeks when others may only take three, so many people take less time off or feel guilty about it when they do, which doesn't happen when you have allotted time off. To combat those issues, there are a few places doing unlimited, but with "minimum vacation" policies to combat the guilt, etc. https://medium.com/@cameronmoll/the-minimum-vacation-policy-15f6c3b922f Finally, the other trend I've seen, which I really like, is combining all paid time off. No more sick, vacation, personal, just all PTO. Take it how you wish. Call in sick when you're sick, but it comes out of the same pool you take your vacation from.
Are projects more tightly watched? Are employees given very fixed rigidly enforced deadlines? Would large scale projects to be delivered over say a few months get broken down into weekly or fortnightly deliverables? I suppose the question is if people take holidays when they want does they end up being micro managed when they are at work? Would such a policy put more overhead on a project manager? I think having minimum time off is a good idea anyway. If I were an employer I would rather have people take breaks throughout the year rather than getting someone who's completely burned out. It would make them fairly useless once they're burn out and probably pissed of with me the employer. Which makes them more useless again. Not quite. If you aren't delivering on tasks but you are off taking holidays its pretty much a recipe for getting fired. Ultimately work needs to get done.
Yeah a few of my clients do unlimited holiday - all has to be ok'd by a manager. The idea is pretty good, you would never be cleared to have loads and loads of time off and it takes away the stress of trying to balance your annual leave use with the work you do. They've been doing it for as long as I've been looking after them - on Average staff take between 22 and 28 days a year, with some exceptions. I don't get unlimited holiday at work, but I get 27 days now, and 3 duvet days. Duvet days are AWESOME. Legitimate sickies. (+all bank holidays)
When I first heard of this I read it as no upper limit on paid holidays but equally and unsaid, no minimum. Staff feel encouraged to be at work - in the "I take less time off because my team needs me" brownie point manner - and inevitably end up taking less leave than what is normally mandated. But it was all their own idea, so no company is breaking the law by reducing holiday entitlement. /Cynic
The thing is, projects aren't more tightly watched. Unlimited holidays is a policy for people almost exclusively in creative fields. These people are subject to burn-out if they don't find balance in their lives and are probably going to be worthless if they don't get some time off to decompress. At the same time, theses are fields where employers recognize that their employees have different needs. One employee may take off a week after having a baby, then take off 10 days for Christmas, but no time off for Thanksgiving or Independence Day. Another employee may need totally different sorts of time off, like . . . every Friday in summer, but then take practically no time off for any other part of the year. Letting employees choose what they need, how, and when is a big sign of trust. It only really works if that trust is real, and if employers mean it when they say "unlimited." The guilt around taking more time off than others, and the hate for other employees who work less than you dissolves if everyone shares that understanding. We are different and have different needs. Again, the other part of this is that sometimes these firms will work people 60-80hrs a week for a month+ to get a product shipped out. These projects sometimes cost hundreds of thousands of dollars a day if they aren't completed on time. When that month is over these people should be encouraged to take off two or three weeks if they want, as a way to say, "that really sucked. Thanks. Please take your time getting back to the office." It's not a policy for places where productivity is easily measured, like number of bricks laid in a common bond wall, or number of packages wrapped, or oil changes per hour. Even when there is overtime for that sort of work, the sort of extra compensation for it is generally easily sorted out as well. 1.5x Pay, "take tomorrow off," etc.
Worked at 2 places that did unlimited holidays (UK). On average, people didn't take enough holiday (!) and it was all a bit pointless. I think I took 2 days one of the years. £0.02.
I can't remember the last time I got to the end of a year and didn't have to take "use it or lose it" days. As far as I can tell, most staff end up taking quite a bit less holiday than they would otherwise and you can simply restrict the ones that try to milk the system by requiring local management approval - win-win... unless you're the staff.
On the face of it, this sounds like an awesome condition of employment, however I have an allocation of 30 holiday days, 5 floating Bank holiday days and 3 fixed holiday days (Xmas and New Year) but this is the first year in many that I will have used up my full allocation without the need to carry over or loose them. Work places are becoming much more flexible, with more options to work from home, duvet days, and so on. I have a very understanding boss, backed by a flexible senior management which means I'm not restricted to the 9 to 5 Mon to Fri. With any system there will be those who work with it and those who try to milk it (those who think they are entitled to x number of sick days [unofficial holidays]).
As others have said... I too have more than enough holiday available to me if I need to use it. I could potentially take 42 days off a year with my annual leave entitlement, bank holidays and maximum flex-time leave. Then if I took TOIL instead of overtime I could potentially gain even more! Unlimited days off is just a gimmick.
I've been "Joe from 12hr. nightshift" and no, I didn't need time to decompress. The work I did was custodial. I got to wear headphones, listen to music, and the work was fairly mindless. The crew I was on was the best my employer ever had (or so he said). We worked really hard and always did extra things with the few hours we had after completing our normal rounds. But . . . it wasn't stressful in and of itself. It was tiring, because I worked from 10PM to 6AM three nights a week (in a row) and I had full time classes that started at 8:30AM and went until 6PM, but it's not the sort of work that, by its nature, would require me to be entitled to unlimited time off. No way.
So some people have pointed out that ultimately people take less holidays even though they are unlimited. Its certainly a fair point. But perhaps that's not what its entirely about. If someone is shown a level of trust and given control over their own free time, does it not go along way towards making that person a bit happier at work. I just think having less of a parent/child relationship with your employer and more of a we're both adults type of relationship benefits everyone. Maybe you do work a few extra days and maybe just maybe your a bit happier about it. Maybe I'm just a talking out my arse
No, I think that's exactly it. I think that (where these policies are enacted) people enjoy their work and are trusted. I don't have unlimited time off, but I recently had a day at work where I had a late afternoon deadline for a project I was working on. The client was coming in for a meeting and I needed to have the presentation ready. My wife called with an emergency and I had to leave. I hated that I had to go. I felt like it made me look bad. The next day I apologized for having to dart out. My boss said that it was fine and that family needs come first. He understands that I care about my work and being professional about things. He also understands what it is like to have a family. He trusted me enough to know that if I said I had to go, that it was probably a real emergency.
