{"id":10175,"date":"2020-07-14T10:17:25","date_gmt":"2020-07-14T10:17:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/managersoffice.net\/?p=10175"},"modified":"2020-07-14T10:17:25","modified_gmt":"2020-07-14T10:17:25","slug":"3-reasons-companies-like-linkedin-virgin-and-netflix-are-giving-their-employees-unlimited-vacation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/managersoffice.net\/el\/3-reasons-companies-like-linkedin-virgin-and-netflix-are-giving-their-employees-unlimited-vacation\/","title":{"rendered":"3 reasons companies like LinkedIn, Virgin, and Netflix are giving their employees ‘unlimited’ vacation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Unlimited vacation sounds great on paper \u2014 and it is if it’s done right.<\/p>\n

If all goes according to LinkedIn’s recently proposed “Discretionary Time Off” (DTO) plan<\/a>, for example, US employees will be able to “act like an owner” of their\u00a0time and\u00a0work with their managers to request time off when they need it.<\/p>\n

“We are not alone in making this shift to DTO. It’s part of a growing movement to place more focus on results and empowerment, not hours worked,”\u00a0LinkedIn’s top HR exec Pat Wadors wrote\u00a0in a blog post<\/a>\u00a0explaining the company’s new policy<\/a>. “And it’s an important step to help employees recharge and keep engaged.”<\/p>\n

Helping employees recharge and remain engaged is certainly commendable, especially considering\u00a0the positive effect paid time off has on people. According to a survey conducted by the US Travel Association<\/a>, workers say their concentration, productivity, and happiness improve when they take time off.<\/p>\n

But let’s not forget that when companies like LinkedIn, Virgin Group,\u00a0and Netflix announce that they won’t track their employee’s time off anymore, they’re not exactly getting the short end of the stick.<\/p>\n

1. Businesses can attract and keep more employees by offering seemingly generous benefits.<\/h3>\n

As\u00a0CNN points out<\/a>, LinkedIn grew 37% last year and plans to expand even more in 2015. Offering attractive benefits as a talent acquisition and retention tool is a fairly commonplace practice, especially among large tech companies that\u00a0face intense competition for engineers.<\/p>\n

2. Companies can stop paying employees\u00a0for unused\u00a0vacation time.<\/h3>\n

LinkedIn\u00a0now employs approximately\u00a06,000 US employees, according to the Huffington Post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Thanks in part to the LinkedIn’s\u00a0rapid hiring, the company reported in its public filings that its\u00a0largest ongoing liability\u00a0is “accrued vacation and other employee-related expenses.” As\u00a0CNN reports<\/a>, the amount totaled more than $128 million as of June, which is 46% higher than in December.<\/p>\n

In fact, according to Project: Time Off’s “Hidden Costs of Unused Leave<\/a>” report, unused vacation is costing American businesses $224 billion.\u00a0The average American takes 16 days of vacation each year,\u00a0according to the vacation advocates<\/a>, and as the report notes, the average vacation liability per employee totals $1,898, while in some companies studied vacation liability comes to\u00a0more than $12,000 per employee.<\/p>\n

3.\u00a0Offering unlimited time off likely won’t hurt\u00a0a business’\u00a0output.<\/h3>\n

And while we hope an overworked workforce is by no means the desired outcome, it’s also worth noting that many suspect employees actually take\u00a0less<\/em>\u00a0vacation when they’re given more control of their time off.<\/p>\n

As Vox’s\u00a0Dylan Matthews argues<\/a>, the problem with an “unlimited” leave policy is that\u00a0“it replaces clear, predictable limits with limits imposed by vague and arbitrary social pressure to work more.”<\/p>\n

The pressure to work more can also come from the language used to describe these policies.<\/p>\n

As Richard Branson put it when he announced Virgin Group’s unlimited vacation policy<\/a>\u00a0last year, “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 a hundred percent 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 \u2014 or, for that matter, their careers!”<\/p>\n

In other words, you had better be sure your job is secure before you think about taking a vacation.<\/p>\n

The result, as\u00a0former MIT Sloan School of Management professor Lotte Bailyn<\/a>\u00a0writes\u00a0on Quartz, is that “many people decide not to take advantage because it’s too hard to figure out the right amount to take.”<\/p>\n

In the end, it would appear that making\u00a0unlimited vacation policies truly benefit employees comes down to making guarantees, through the right language\u00a0and role-modeling\u00a0by higher-ups, that taking time to relax and recharge isn’t just allowed, but encouraged.<\/p>\n

Manager\u2019s Office US<\/strong><\/p>\n

HR Dept<\/strong><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Unlimited vacation sounds great on paper \u2014 and it is if it’s done right. If all goes according to LinkedIn’s…<\/p>","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":9454,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":""},"categories":[189,153],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n3 reasons companies like LinkedIn, Virgin, and Netflix are giving their employees 'unlimited' vacation - Manager's Office<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/managersoffice.net\/el\/3-reasons-companies-like-linkedin-virgin-and-netflix-are-giving-their-employees-unlimited-vacation\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"el_GR\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"3 reasons companies like LinkedIn, Virgin, and Netflix are giving their employees 'unlimited' vacation - Manager's Office\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Unlimited vacation sounds great on paper \u2014 and it is if it’s done right. 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