Should You Rethink Your Vacation Policy?

Marcianne Kuethen

January 25, 2016

Here, several Amtec team members relax during an island vacation they earned this past fall.

Did you know that U.S. employees get less vacation time than workers in any country, except South Korea? Quite a few other countries entitle their employees to more than a month of paid vacation. Yet America continues to cling to traditional vacation policies that may not be practical for our changing world, especially as Millennials make up an increasing percentage of the workforce.

According to Dr. Travis Bradberry, current vacation policies stem from the Industrial Age when people worked 9-to-5 assembly line jobs. Today, many professionals with technology-based jobs are able to work from anywhere, a perk that most employees feel improves their work/life balance. With the change from hourly to results-based jobs, some very successful companies such as Netflix, Semco, Evernote, and FullContact have switched to offering an unlimited vacation policy to their employees.

As an employer, you might worry that your employees could take advantage of such freedom and start slacking off–which for hourly jobs would decrease productivity. (Read this post about why unlimited vacation policies don’t work for everyone.) But for results-based jobs, your workers would operate under goals, metrics, and deadlines you set for them, so when or how often they work wouldn’t be the focus. Surprisingly, those companies who have instigated an unlimited vacation policy find that it creates fiercely loyal, productive employees whose dedicated efforts help their businesses thrive even more. In fact, several companies have found the need to incentivize their employees to use their vacation time to prevent workaholism! Such loyalty and productivity are worth paying attention to, in light of Gallup’s finding that only 32.3% of employees are engaged at work.

Should you rethink your vacation policy? It may seem unlikely that your company could start offering an unlimited vacation policy, and allowing employees to work from anywhere just won’t work for some types of jobs. But as increased technology surpasses the Industrial Age’s limitations, organizations may need to rethink their traditional vacation policies. The war for talent is still being waged. If unlimited vacation time breeds a greater sense of responsibility and company loyalty in your workers, perhaps it’s time to give it a try in your workplace!

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