Cary Cooper praises Virgin’s new vacation policy:
Richard Branson has introduced a radical new policy for Virgin employees, offering his personal staff unlimited holiday rather than a fixed number of days in a given year. … The policy, or indeed non-policy, is a modern solution to a modern problem – our jobs are infringing on our personal lives more than ever and the nine-to-five life is becoming a thing of the past. We talk constantly of how our devices bring work into our homes but few meaningful solutions are forthcoming. If staff are expected to be flexible with their time, why should they expect any less in return?
It is good to see an employer signalling to his employees that he values them so highly he is prepared to offer them such a generous benefit. Branson says he has taken his inspiration from online video subscription service Netflix but other than these two companies, such a policy is relatively unheard of.
Others are more skeptical. Anne Perkins notes a tension in this plan:
According to Branson, [when to take vacation days] would be simply a matter of personal judgment. The only constraint would be if the employee entertained the faintest doubt that he or she was “up to date on every project and that their absence will not in any way damage the business”. Or, as he put it with that legendary twinkle, their careers.
That should be enough to keep most workers chained to their desks for ever. If the first condition for taking time off is deciding you wouldn’t be missed, it sounds scarily like an invitation to the boss to make it permanent.
Simon Kelner spots a double-standard:
It’s all right for Branson. It’s his business, and he can slip off to Necker Island any time he wants. He’s got a squadron of underlings to take up the slack, and in any case no one is going to question his right to take a break. For his employees, however, it’s a slightly more complicated and nuanced equation. In theory, it’s modern working practice, redolent of a new-age dot-com business, but in reality it leaves too much within the realms of uncertainty, placing an added burden on the individual worker.
Choice means anxiety. How much holiday is too much? Eight weeks? Ten weeks? Twelve? There are no guidelines, other than what we imagine our colleagues will think of us if we’re consistently absent from our workstations.
Leonid Bershidsky puts the policy in international perspective:
Although this policy sounds attractive, it is also quintessentially American. The U.S. is the world’s only advanced economy that doesn’t guarantee people a paid vacation. Netflix workers may well end up taking none if they want to keep their jobs. Disappearing for a month would definitely undermine an employee’s ability to be effective.
Under employer rules that envisage a certain amount of time off each year, many people don’t use it all. The average U.S. employee only uses 51 percent of allotted vacation time. Asked why, most people say nobody else can do their work or they’re afraid of getting behind. But 17 percent admit they’re fearful of not meeting goals or getting fired, and another 13 percent say they want to outperform colleagues.
The Dish 