employees, benefitsAs I’m thinking about benefits I would eventually like to offer employees (trying to think some of it through before I actually have any employees), I’m particularly interested in the idea of unregulated time off.
I really like the idea of building a culture of trust within the company. Along with trust, it also seems like it would add a sense of responsibility and ownership (you show them trust, they are likely to reciprocate) AND the added knowledge that as long as they get their work done, I don’t really care if they’re in the office or not could even be a motivation to work more efficiently.
I feel like it could work really well in practice, and most of the reason I can think of for it not to work involve having the wrong employees working for you in the first place.
I’m curious if anyone here has tried this within their startup or has examples (preferably with documentation) of companies that have implemented it with poor results.
Here are some articles about unlimited time off policies for anyone interested:
Trust is built on clear expectations that regardless of outcome benefit all parties.
Unlimited time off is not unlimited time off - and ultimately this approach benefits the employer, not the employee, since there’s no liability on the books for accrued paid time off, and most employees on average will never take off because they’re not going to lose accrued time off if they don’t use it.
If you want a real paid time off benefit, allow paid time off to accrue from day one, give a generous maximum time off accrual, then payout any time that’s accrued beyond that amount. Otherwise, you’re creating a system that’s likely complex, unfamiliar, likely to cause uncertainty, and will game the way that humans behave within the workplace.
I know several companies who have a culture that says, if you do your work well, we don’t care how or where you do it.
So the question is, what’s your work?
It’s pretty rare that any meaningful role in a company comes without (a) time-based objectives, and (b) regular contact with other people. If that’s going to be the case for you, then you’re not really offering “unlimited time off,” but “unlimited trust over how you manage your time.”
That’s less eye-popping, but an attractive benefit and one that’s worked well for lots of startups.
An unlimited time off policy can actually backfire and work against the employees’ interests, resulting in the opposite result of what was hoped for. Specifically, they can be peered pressured to not consume the time they need or want out of fear to appear lazy (or simply not take it because they feel they’re working on their own business or because they’re workaholics).
To avoid this, you need to take an additional step and make some time off mandatory each year (or as Evernote does, offer a financial bonus for actually taking it). For instance, if you say the minimum is two weeks per year and on Dec 15th they’ve yet to take a vacation, then make the point and tell them to drop everything they’re in the middle of a week in advance, and send them on vacation – no ifs, no buts.
This is not just about trust. I suppose it depends on the type of company you are, In the normal way of a fixed amount of time off, you have a good idea of how much work that can get done in a week / month / year etc, and can plan, charge your clients, etc. around this. Usually this is the manager’s job.
I imagine a lot of confusion and inconsistency arising over how long a job should take vs how long it does take. If they get it done too quickly are you going to revise down your estimate and nullify the incentive? (If not you may worry that you are over-estimating or that the employee is not giving their full potential) If it takes too long, are they going to get annoyed that they get landed with the time-consuming projects?
Fairness becomes very difficult in this case.
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