We’re sacking off our unlimited holiday at UNKNOWN. It’s a bit of an experiment really, but here’s why… 1. No one took more than 21 days in the year. 2. That happened to be consistent across our top performers, so it set a sort of weird ‘guilty standard’. 3. There’s just a general anxiety of ‘yeah but like, actually how much can I take?’ 4. Unlimited didn’t exactly mean unlimited. Like.. we weren’t saying you could take every single chuffing day off. So why are we even saying it then? 5. Research (not mine) shows that humans work best when they’re given clarity. And tokens to spend instead of something undefined. So… we’re reverting back to a set amount of days. But… Everyone in the business will have the same number. And that number will be… Thirty two. 32. FirtyFlipplinTwo. Life is meant to be lived. Things and friends are meant to be seen. No matter how junior or senior you are in life. Feels right. Might not be. 🤪
Do you have rollover limit that the team can take into the next year Ollie Scott? 1 of the things I've noticed is how hard it can be to encourage people to take all of their days off and actually detach from work. Do you have any ingenious ways to encourage the team to actually take a holiday?! We have an off-the-grid bonus that we give if someone doesn't come online for 7 days. That's definitely helpful but I still see a lot of leave mounting up!
After having a job with unlimited time off where everyone was expected to work on their vacation, and now I have a job with four weeks of PTO (not including sick time + closing the office in the last week of December), I MUCH prefer the four weeks. The biggest difference is no one is made to feel guilty about taking time off.
You forgot to set a minimum?
Too bad. I like unlimited PTO. Here in Canada, the amount of vacation/sick time that a lot of companies give employees is an absolute joke. I like not having to strategically plan vacations around mandatory holidays just so I can actually take a sustained amount of time off.
I understand that some, maybe a lot of, people feel somewhat guilty taking "extra" days off. But at the same time, you say yourself that unlimited was never actually unlimited. This, to me, sends a clear message that even though it was called unlimited, it was expected of employees to only take the 21 days - and so they did. I'm a big defender of "get shit done" work hours and holidays. As long as the company does well, is growing, and employees pull their weight, I highly believe it's best to let them decide when, where and how they work. If someone needs to take a sabbatical for a month, after completing a big project, we shouldn't limit them by deducting days off an arbitrary number. IMHO
Crazy huh? I’d love unlimited. But interestingly my husband has it, and takes less annual leave than I do with my allocated leave! I’ve often wondered if it actually puts more pressure on employees to somehow justify their leave decisioning eg top performers typically take on more than just expectation, so can they ‘justify’ their leave if there is something of business importance underway which they are leading, supporting or contributing to (which lets be honest is fairly consistent)? I’ve often wondered if it’s a bit like the ‘team bonus’ psychology where everyone feels they must be overly demonstrative of playing their part.
Some things that I think have helped supplement an unlimited leave policy: 1. Setting a minimum that people should take in addition to the “unlimited” policy so that people who are feeling confused know they must at least take the minimum. 2. Putting in place a quarterly self care day which everyone is encouraged to take. I had mine yesterday and played snooker with my dad. For those of us with families or other commitments, the self care day, with focus on the self, is a genuine game changer. 3. Reminding people that when it comes to reviews etc, they will be assessed on whether they’ve met their goals or not, not the amount of hours they’ve worked per se. I appreciate this may not work for all roles.
I wouldn’t care if it’s unlimited versus 32, so long as I never have to bank anything or track anything ever again. It’s the mental overhead of time off that’s so emotionally and culturally draining. What rolls over? What do you get paid out on exit? How much can you go into “debt” for? What’s the accrual rate? Blah blah blah. All wasted energy to maybe save the company a few dollars it loses many times over in lost engagement and morale.
Unlimited vacation really does sound good. But I think that the advantage is biased to the company. 1) As you mention, the likelihood is that most employees will take less PTO than they might if there were a set amount per year. 2) By not having fixed vacation, there is no accrued vacation for employees. This means that the company does not carry the accrued vacation in the books as a liability. That's a pretty good deal when you consider point 1 above. Also, consider the poor employee who had deferred vacation for some critical company project and then got laid off before taking the PTO.
Founder & CEO at UNKNOWN | Founder at Good Brains for Good Brands
1yCrikey. I wasn’t expecting this. Just to be clear, this is additionally to Bank Holidays. And we try to close for 10 days (or however it falls) over Christmas.