Posted on 09/25/2014 6:15:01 AM PDT by markomalley
Sir Richard Branson, the billionaire founder of Virgin Group, has told 170 staff working for its head office that they can take as much annual leave as they like, providing it will not damage the business.
“Flexible working has revolutionised how, where and when we all do our jobs,” Sir Richard said on his website. “So if working nine to five no longer applies, then why should strict annual leave (vacation) policies?”
Sir Richard said he was inspired by Netflix, the US based video streaming service which has a similar policy on not tracking staff holidays. The company reported that staff morale, creativity and productivity had all risen since the “non policy” was introduced.
The blurring of the boundaries between work life and home life caused by advances in mobile technology meant that companies were “no longer able to accurately track employees’ total time on the job,” Sir Richard said, adding that there was no need for his staff to ask for prior approval before taking time off.
“It is left to the employee alone to decide if and when he or she feels like taking a few hours, a day, a week or a month off, the assumption being that they are only going to do it when they feel 100 per cent comfortable that they and their team are up to date on every project and that their absence will not in any way damage the business – or, for that matter, their careers,” he added.
(Excerpt) Read more at ft.com ...
At my last company, I had the exact same holiday policy for my employees.
This is actually a sneaky thing to do. My old firm used to give 10 sick days a year, and everybody used 8 or so. Then they made it “unlimited” sick time, which really wasn’t unlimited, and everyone took fewer since nobody was sure of the point where you attracted too much attention.
Really, it’s just a throwback to the way “salaried” is supposed to work - you agree to provide a certain amount of work for a set salary. If it takes you 6 hours a day or 10, that’s on you, not the employer. If I can meet (or exceed) my objectives in a fashion where I can take a Friday off once in a while, why shouldn’t I be allowed to?
The only monkey wrench is the need to have certain members of a team available to each other at specific times for coordination. But that’s easy to work out if everyone communicates with each other in the first place.
How? In that they are recognizing that this is not a 9 to 5, Monday through Friday working world anymore? By treating their employees like rational, trustworthy human-freakin'-beings and assuming that they won't abuse the policy? I don't necessarily equate those with liberal policies, but if you're saying that a true conservative would not only slash their salaries to the bone but also do away with the whole ridiculous paid time off nonsense then I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.
At one company I worked at for years, we could donate personal, sick, vacation time to co-workers who really needed it since most of us didn’t use much of ours anyway. That was very pleasant, none us ever hit the use-it-or-lose-it wall.
Here's an idea, how about the people who are doing the actual work? Trusting that they will know their job and ensure the work is done? The same people who carry their work phone around on their days off and who are going through their emails at 1 in the morning? Maybe they're capable of making that decision?
Nice work Branson. treating employees like responsible adults. Novel concept.
Because everone knows that workers are only motivated by fear, right?
“It is left to the employee alone to decide if and when he or she feels like taking a few hours, a day, a week or a month off, the assumption being that they are only going to do it when they feel 100 per cent comfortable that they and their team are up to date on every project and that their absence will not in any way damage the business – or, for that matter, their careers,” he added.
...
And since most companies are understaffed, you’ll be lucky to get a single vacation day.
they feel 100 per cent comfortable that they and their team are up to date on every project and that their absence will not in any way damage the business – or, for that matter, their careers,” he added.
If we tried this in our unit, the same 4-5 attendance abusers would be laughing their asses off on a beach somewhere while the rest of us are discussing chipping in on an RV in the parking lot since we’e too busy to even go home.
Which is pretty much the way it is now, minus the RV.
Exactly.
“And who determines that, Sir Richard? “
It’s his business. He looks at the balance sheet. So, yeah.
Ultimately, the C-level executives and partners of Virgin Group, I would think.
Certainly, it's not anyone else's determination to make -- especially not the government's (although I have no doubt some lefty whacko politician will now sooner or later propose that the policy become mandatory for all businesses, or at least those with more than 50 employees).
This would only work if there is a strong sense of “owenership” in the job.
A business owner definitely “enjoys “ that “freedom”, but typically he works very long hours.
This is the point I was making in post #4 and was challenged on. When you give employees "as much leave as they want, as long as it doesn't hurt the business", the 'hurting' threshold will be open to broad interpretation. Hard working ditch diggers will dig all day long if that is what is expected. If you tell them to knock off whenever they want to grab a beer, there will be a lot of shovels on the ground.
Been there done that. The last company I worked for was always shedding workers. When I started there we had four thousand or so then there was a contract change and then we had sixteen hundred. Through retirement attrition and layoffs by the time I left voluntarily there was only a little over five hundred left.
All of the ‘fat’ was gone and if someone took vacation or got sick then someone had to be offered overtime to cover the necessary shifts. The union guys loved that, the Exempt personnel were burned out with fifty or sixty hour weeks and only being compensated for forty hours.
So yeah, in my experience being offered all of the time off you needed was/is seen as a ploy to discover who could be laid off next.
Sounds like your company didn't need a system for determining who needed to be laid off next other than raw numbers. We have 500, we want to go to 450, grab 50 and let them go. In a place like that it's far more likely that the ones making the higher salary would be first on the chopping block.
My company is like that. They don’t have a sick day policy. If you’re sick, you’re sick.
I got kidney stones my third week there and was out for a few days. I think in the ensuing 5 years, I’ve missed one day. Therefore, if I get sick and take a week, nobody is going to think I’m taking advantage.
How did it work out?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.