Would An Unlimited Holiday Policy Lead to Chaos In Your Firm?
The idea of offering your staff unlimited holiday is probably quite a terrifying notion for the conscientious small business owner. Why would a business adopt such a seemingly anarchic policy; it would undoubtedly lead to chaos. Unmanned shop counters, unanswered phones, unfulfilled orders would surely be commonplace under such a crazy sounding policy.
Well, why then have none other than Virgin’s Richard Branson adopted an unlimited holiday policy within his 170 strong body of personal staff? He admitted to following the trend that he observed at Netflix and his rationale for doing it seemed to be along the lines of wanting to do away with ‘draconian’ holiday policies by giving people the freedom and self-determinism to decide how much they work, but trusting them to manage fulfilment of their duties and customer requirements.
And actually when you look at the policy closely, then you can quite clearly see the method behind what many might see as madness.
“There is no need to ask for prior approval and neither the employees themselves nor their managers are asked or expected to keep track of their days away from the office. 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 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!”
This is of course an ambitious policy, and places a lot of trust in staff to be conscientious and responsible, which is why Branson is piloting it with his own team and if successful he would like to see it adopted within his own subsidiaries. The risks associated with such a policy also explain why unlimited holiday policies have been limited to a very few, innovative, pioneering firms, often in the hi-tech sector. But, the truth is that there are many firms out there who use unlimited holiday and who make it work for their business.
In truth, I think it can work. Why am I so confident of this? Because you are introducing a level of self-determinism and personal responsibility that is no different to the system to which millions of freelancers all over the world, work to every day. Being trusted and given this freedom too operate autonomously is highly motivating and has it’s own inbuilt control mechanism. Just like with freelancers if they system is abused the employee will fail their clients, colleagues and associates and ultimately (after being fired), won’t get paid either. Of course, if you do well, you’ll get your bonus, keep your job and get a raise. You decide. And the truth is, most ambitious, goal driven people with financial and career targets will make responsible decisions and use their unlimited holiday allowance in a win-win way. There will of course be exceptions, that is, people who abuse the system but in time they should be automatically managed out of the business as they will most likely be underperforming.
But, what do you think? Should businesses adopt unlimited holiday policies or do you think it would leave to corporate chaos?
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