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More companies are experimenting with unlimited vacation policies. But is it really all a day at the beach?
Sanket Naik took a six-week trip last year to Thailand and India to see his family, but he didn’t worry about using up all his alloted vacation time.
Naik, senior director of cloud operations at Coupa, a tech startup, doesn’t have to accrue days off, and he didn’t negotiate a plum deal with his employer. The company just gives him and its staff of 100 all the vacation days they want.
“There’s the flexibility to travel or fulfill personal commitments without violating HR policies. We don’t have to count anymore,” he said about Coupa’s vacation policy, which was implemented in January.
Welcome to the world of unlimited vacation days. Coupa is one of a handful of companies, including TheLadders and Netflix, that have decided to offer the perk to employees.
“This is an unusual benefit and not in the mainstream yet, but more companies seem to be looking at this as an option,” said Steven Miranda, managing director for the Center for Advanced Human Resource Studies at Cornell University ILR School.
"It's not a gimmick," said workplace change management consultant Matthew Stegmeier.
“Organizations that have had success with unlimited vacation, such as Netflix and Red Frog Events, rely strongly on accountability,” he said. “Employees must make sure all their responsibilities are covered prior to leaving, which often means counting on a colleague to pick up the slack. As such, excessive vacation usage will be frowned upon as it grates on colleagues.”
Indeed, unlimited vacation doesn’t mean you can spend your life at the beach. Most employers who offer the option still require workers to get permission for the time off from their managers. And many workers who are offered the benefit end up working during those so-called vacation stints.
During his long vacation in Asia, Naik estimates he worked remotely for Coupa for about two to three weeks, using online tools such as Skype and mobile broadband to get his work done.
When asked whether the mixing of work and leisure time takes away from the goal of a vacation, which is to recharge, Naik said, “That’s the reality. Even if you did not have unlimited vacation, you still have to deal with managing your personal time with work time -- a challenge anyone that works in a modern work environment needs to deal with.”
For Mark Verbeck, Coupa’s chief finance officer, the unlimited vacation policy was about freedom. “We want to empower our people to make the right decisions and be responsible without bogging us down with many pages of policies and rules.”
As for the potential to abuse the system, he said, “If you’re making sure people are getting the job done, then this policy can’t be abused.”
However, Cornell's Miranda said some employees may not take the time off they deserve.
Because there are no specified vacation days, some employees may not take time off, especially if they are worried about their job performance. "If the company has a culture where it's working people to the bone they’ve not eliminated an aspect of forcing people to take time off," he said.
TheLadders, with 200 employees, has had the unlimited vacation-time benefit for three years. The longest period of time anyone has taken off consecutively since it's been offered is about five weeks, said Angela Romano Kuo, vice president of human resources for the company.
“Our salaried employees aren’t given a bank of vacation days; they take what they need,” she said. “If there’s a long weekend or a longer vacation that they want to take, they simply need to get their manager’s approval for the specific time off. Managers will ask the requesting employee for a plan of what will happen to his or her work during the absence, and if they’re confident that the workload will be covered, the request is approved, which it almost always is.”
In the end, she said, “Our employees are responsible for the quality of their work, responsible for the hours they work, so they should also be responsible for the amount of vacation time they use.”
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Yeah this i gonna work. HAHAHAHAHAHA
It actually does - with teams like the one I'm on, even on vacation people are still connected and working. Hell, even when I take a week off - I still call in to conference calls and use my laptop to check email, etc...
At least this way I would be able to take more time "off" and work remotely in a nicer location.
Ebeneezer - That's remote work, not a vacation.
I agree with Brian - and I am in favor of remote work/working from home if the technology allows you to do your job 100% the same as you would in the office.
But unlimited vacation, where you simply have to make sure your coworkers do your job (and do it well) while you are gone? If there is good management that holds the coworkers accountable for the work being done and done well, then yes this would work.
if the management isnt good, and the coworkers dont really have to pitch in and do a good job, and then the worker who goes on vacation comes back and is "in trouble" for not "better managing their workload while being gone" then I would never use this unlimited vacation like it would be used against me.
As it is already, when I leave for a week at a time for vacation (which has only happened 1 time in the past 5 years) or leave for 3 days in a row...my desk is piled up with work because my sales rep thinks it's ok to not ask others to pitch in while im gone.
I cant imagine the flip out he'd have if it I took 2 weeks off...
it just would never work in our environment. sales reps are a special breed.
How is it a vacation if you're still working? I thought that was called telecommuting? Good-bye personal/private life!
Are they hiring??? Because I am SO there!!! Or not, because I may be on vacation.
Unlimited vacations sounds like working for the government.
CM you are right however the private sector expects a work product - mention work product in the government environment and you get a blank stare and re-evaluated.
"expects a work product" - lol
"would you like some fries with that"...is that the work product you're talking about? because most everyone else is working on computers, pushing #'s around and emails, and not really "creating" anything super tangible.
most people are middlemen, taking cuts on things they really dont need to be taking cuts on. for example, the in-clinic pharmacies doctors are doing because "workmans comp" takes too long to fill prescripts. So they've created a "product" where some middle men "repackage meds" and mark them up 10x the normal cost, and sell them to workmans comp - who doesnt challenge the markup.
rather than giving them 5 pills to hold them over until the script comes through the normal pharmacy at the normal price.
THATS how america is these days - that is the business model. rip people off, and call it a "work product".
My son has this, he works for a national company that has very few locations and probably not more than150 employees nationwide, he is the boss at his location. When he is gone, he's on his laptop or the phone with his crew 25% of the time. So far it's working. The way his company is set up I could see it, his crew doesn't have the option,just management, they get the standard 2 weeks/yr. However, I worked in food service most of my life, no way would it work, or let's say at major retailers, no way.
That doesn't really sound like a vacation.
That's what I told him, when he's at thejob it's usually 60-70 hrs/wk.
Tony, does he have a family? These type of jobs seems great for a young single individual, but I worry about their intrusion into family time/space?
Even if not unlimited, if the policy were to be 6 months on, 6 months on, this concept would immediately reduce the unemployment rate to below 4%.
No slashing of government programs and no new taxes.
A win - win.
This of course won't work for some departments. Something like this would be great for an IT or Marketing dept's because they work with projects and you can shift priorities to make room for time off. As someone in IT it's expected that you are available for emergencies and not compromising projects during any scheduled time off anyway. I would love it if they just made this official.
This is basically the situation at my place, but only for the dev and graphics team. Sales and support have to be babysat at is it; no one would give any of those jokers unlimited time off.
But in dev, we've been doing this for years and no one abuses it. There's no greater motivator that peer-pressure. Your project is your life. Time-off works around that. And no-one wants to be the weak link in the team. I think on average, we take less than a week off a year. Maybe right around a week. Although one guy did take a month off last year, but he had worked without a break for 5 years by that point.
All this is to say that self-regulation works, and is a win-win, provided you have the right sort of attitude.
Brother, if you're only taking a week or less a year then it's not working for you. If you're not able to take at least a couple weeks off or more, and that's whether you stagger them or not then your projects and/or your manager is not being managed properly. I get 3-4 weeks a year and I sure as hell don't give any back. I make sure I take that time off. I earned it. It should be more.
Sounds like your employer is abusing it, Bob.
That's not a description of a system that's working.
I had unlimited vacations last year. It was called unemployment though. I got to vacation every day in my back yard.
Unlimited vacations is an employers way of making sure you eventually have no vacations. The only way to truly enjoy a vacation is to separate it completely from the working environment. Unlimited vacation policies don't allow that separation. When I'm on vacation I don't expect to take my work laptop with me or respond to work related emails
This is an idea that must have originated in the White House.
always gotta be one idiot that has to inject politics. how about you originate throwing your computer out the window and you follow.
my employer is always trying to figure out how to take things back. like vacation time, retirement plans, raising insurance co-pays. worked for them too long to quit. when i retire though i'm going to write a book about EPA violations and other little tidbits and help them out all i can with a lawsuit or two.
What a stupid idea. We can't all be the CEO...
People who believe that unlimited vacation really means unlimited time off are mistaken. My guess is that you are still plugged in via smart phone, laptop and conf calls. The modern corporate american cannot stop working upon leaving the office at night. TV watching in the evening is in front of the laptop, my weekends at the grocery store involve me checking the smart phone as it pushes more emails to me. In a global economy, business never sleeps and never takes a vacation and although you may be out of the office, your cell phone and laptop are the leashes that corporations use to tie you to them 24/7 around the globe. The description of unlimited vacation assumes that they still have you on the leash and that you really don't get time off. The hotel better have Wi-Fi.
If the job gets done who cares about haw many you take off. Its all about self responsibility. Something the senate and congress need to learn about. They work with unlimited vacation. It starts when they are elected.
Try this in a company where the government has come in and demanded that they hire people based on criteria other than work history, performance, education, test results, etc. Won't work when you are forced to hire employees that you know will abuse everything! That also adds the element of the potential for being sued if one of those people doesn’t feel they were treated properly if the manager doesn’t let them take off whenever they want. No, in some environments this would fail miserably!
being plugged in while away and so forth is today's fact of life so that's not gonna change, not even unlimited vacation. what you'll have is a culture where there will be some people who just won't be bothered with taking vacation and they will be marked as exemplary by the bosses for obvious reasons and those who take time off will be vilified. Furthermore they will simply overburden you to the point you won't even get anything done even without taking any vacation. Result: you will feel guilty about taking time off and if they say you don't perform well enough in your review they may suggest you reduce your vacation time to "improve" your performance. Trust me when it's good to be true.... it's always is.
A lot of people are taking an unlimited vacation with jobless claims too- at least until the benefits run out, then it's not so unlmited
OK all you naysayers about the government - what you say may hold some truth concerning those "working" in Washington DC, but they abuse the whole system. Now here is a hometruth - those of us who work for the government as workerbees get 2 weeks vacation aka leave and 2 weeks sick leave the first few years. As one climbs the ladder of promotions it can escalate to as much as 30 days a year leave (vacation) and same for sick leave. For those of us who travel for the government and accrue 100's of hours of travel time above and beyond our regular 40 hour work week schedules, we add that overtime to leave. We do earn our time off, and yes, there are some who abuse the system all the time. I work with 2 women who spend approximately 1 hour every morning before they even turn on their computers or check messages, fixing their hair and putting on make-up at their desks. I find this highly unprofessional and somewhat unethical. They waste several hours a week, which does not gibe well with my work ethic. There are a couple men who take long lunch hours and come in late and leave early. Some people love to shove their work on others so they can do "other things" - lots of complaints about that to other workers, but again, nothing done. It's not right, it's not fair, but until management does something about it, it will continue - private or public sector. Please don't denigrate the government workers - well, ok denigrate the higher levels in Washington all you want, I can chime in a time or two on that hahaha. I work from home sometimes and find I am more relaxed and better able to function without all the distractions of other workers and such. Also, I can get in here and chat hahaha. Off to the salt mines now. Have a wonderful day all.
What they are not saying of course is that this is not unlimited PAID vacation. It is unlimited unpaid time off. Big difference.
But they are salaried workers, so there is no unpaid time off, right?
I doubt they do this with hourly workers, probably just salary, and they get a set paycheck regardless.
I get to take little mini vacations every day. It's those 3 to 4 hours that I'm at work every day before and after all of my employees are at work.
This would work fine for me, since in my job as much as 50% of my time is spent just sitting around on the company dollar anyway. I'm salaried and I get my work done ahead of time nearly all the time, so what else to do? I might as well be on vacation between the spikes of work, like on a retainer. I realize not everyone enjoys this kind of position though.