The Center for American Progress reports:
At Authentic Jobs, a job search website, employees aren't just given vacation days. They're now required to take a certain number each year.
When founder Cameron Moll first started the company, he decided to institute an unlimited vacation policy much like the one in place at larger companies like Virgin Atlantic and Netflix. "Running Authentic Jobs, I see a lot of perks come through," Moll told ThinkProgress. "One that crops up is often vacation." Moll, resistant to typical corporate culture, was looking to do things differently. An attractive vacation policy can draw talent. "It does make for a good sell with potential candidates," he said. "It just sounds awesome."
But he found he didn't like the policy. [...] no one was taking enough.
[...]This trend had negative ramifications at Authentic Jobs. "Our overall health wasn't as good as it could be," he said. He also didn't have a way to track how much time people were taking and when, so he had no way to urge people to take more.
So he decided to try something different. "What if we got rid of this policy we had in place and flipped the traditional vacation policy on its head?" he thought to himself. "Instead of focus on maximum, focus on minimums." The new policy requires employees to take off 12 holidays and 15 vacation days a year, and then they can take unlimited time above that. "We're saying you need to take off at least 27 days per year and then beyond that if you need additional time, feel free to do it," he explained.
"Right now it's only a concept, only a theory for us, we just implemented it recently," he said. "I'm really curious to see how it plays out."
(Score: 2) by ticho on Thursday October 30 2014, @09:52AM
Where I work (one of world's biggest IT corps), we are strongly encouraged to do the same. There's apparently been a new policy about "work-life balance" coming from upstairs, because it's quite new, but this year the management seems to be very focused at making everyone spend as much of their allotted vacation time as possible.
It's a good trend, I like it.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday October 30 2014, @10:46AM
Agreed. Many banks practise "mandatory time off" too, the rationale being that if you're conducting some kind of fraud or embezzlement[1], then it's more likely to come to light when you're away for two weeks and someone is filling in for you.
[1] Fraud or embezzlement against the bank, that is. The banks themselves are of course free to screw over their customers and the economy in general for their own profit in any way they see fit. And then get bailed out by the taxpayer afterwards.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 30 2014, @05:32PM
It's definitely much better than the "unlimited" vacation that Virgin etc are offering where:
http://www.virgin.com/richard-branson/why-were-letting-virgin-staff-take-as-much-holiday-as-they-want [virgin.com]
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!
Emphasis mine... So how many are going to end up taking zero vacation at Virgin ;)?
Now compare it with a mandatory vacation where the company culture is to accept that your vacation is unlikely to damage your career (and not taking vacation might even damage it).
I know someone who worked for a Scandinavian company. Soon after he joined he stayed in the office after the normal working hours (as per "conventional culture"). After a few days of this one of the bosses asked him whether anything was wrong:
1) Were more resources required?
2) Did he need more training?
3) Was the job suitable for him?
4) etc
After that he went home promptly at "going home time". :)
Isn't it true that something is wrong if someone has to _keep_ working beyond the official working hours, or not take vacations?
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday October 30 2014, @09:54AM
Hopefully my employer will bring this in. And when it's so successful with time off, they'll extend the concept to cover wages as well...
(Score: 2, Interesting) by evk on Thursday October 30 2014, @10:26AM
Unlimited time off is a bit different, but a minimum of 15 days vacation? Surly even USA regulates that in law?
(Score: 4, Informative) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday October 30 2014, @10:41AM
It might be mandatory to *offer* the employee 15 days, but the reality in many places is that if you actually try to use them, then expect disapproving looks from your line manager and some bullshit reason not to give you a raise / not to keep you on at your next review. In TFA the employer is mandating that the employee actually *uses* his/her allocated days off. I can't imagine the US, with its Victorian attitudes to labour rights, ever enshrining something like that in law - even if it results in a demonstrable improvement in production.
Legal minimum annual leave here in the EU is 25 days, plus a handful public holidays throughout the year. Oh, and paid sick leave on top of that. Just sayin'.
(Score: 1) by evk on Thursday October 30 2014, @10:49AM
Yeah, what you describe is the obvious result of not having a minimum. Can't see why they even bother with a requirement for offering 15 days. I honestly didn't think that any democratic non-developing country was that backward.
(Score: 5, Funny) by GeminiDomino on Thursday October 30 2014, @11:47AM
Bitch, please, we're the US of Motherfuckin' A.
We don't do it unless we can do it to fucking ELEVEN. We're not only backward, we're the backwardEST.
Because that's just how we roll.
"We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of our culture"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday October 30 2014, @12:52PM
And, is the new minimum really 15 days? Last decade it was "standard" to offer 10, increasing to 15 after 5 years of service. Maybe they've realized that the job churn economy we've had for the last 20 years means that most people with 20 years experience have been booted around from company to company so much that it's *cough* not fair *cough* to equate years of service with a single company to humane starting vacation levels.
Life-work balance-wise, 10 days might have made sense for kids fresh out of school with no outside life and no real experience - they needed to suffer and the vacation perk kept them from job hopping as much. Not so much of an incentive now when it's arbitrary luck whether or not your division or company ends up chopping 20, 40, or 100% of their workforce due to "unforeseen economic realities."
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Thursday October 30 2014, @05:47PM
And, is the new minimum really 15 days? Last decade it was "standard" to offer 10, increasing to 15 after 5 years of service.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics collects data like this.
Here is a good one that compares 2012 with 1992-93. [bls.gov]
With one year tenure the average has gone from about 8 in '92-'93 to 10 in 2012.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Thursday October 30 2014, @01:19PM
There is no mandatory minimum vacation time in the USA, and no requirement of any kind of paid time off from work. About the only time you are legally required to give any kind of time off is when an employee gives birth to a child, and even then you don't have to pay her (as far as the father of that child, tough luck, he has to go back to work immediately to pay the bills).
There are lots of labor practices in the USA that would seem very alien in, say, Germany. For example, in most of the USA, anybody can be legally fired for nearly any reason at any time without any notice whatsoever. And if they are fired for one of a very short list of illegal reasons to fire somebody, the burden of proof is on the fired employee to demonstrate that the company fired them primarily because of one of those specific reasons.
Also quite common is wage theft, where an employee is not paid the entirety of the wages owed to them. Approximately one out of 5 workers in America is on the receiving end of that, and in many professions (child care, warehouse stockers, home health care, car wash and parking attendants, retail, janitors, landscapers, and several others) well over half of employees are not fully paid. Rarely is this actually prosecuted.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 30 2014, @07:12PM
About the only time you are legally required to give any kind of time off is when an employee gives birth to a child, and even then you don't have to pay her (as far as the father of that child, tough luck, he has to go back to work immediately to pay the bills).
IMNAL, but according to the Family Medical Leave Act website at http://www.dol.gov/whd/fmla/ [dol.gov] any eligible employee can take time off, mother or father, but you are correct about it not being paid time off.
From the FMLA website:
Also, you can negotiate additional time off when you start a job (I did) or during your review. It doesn't cost the employer any more money and you can use this to offset additional salary you would like to make, but they are not willing to pay.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 30 2014, @01:10PM
I live in Estonia and we have this policy on a national level. Everyone who works full time is given 1 month of paid vacation per year. By law, your employer can make you plan your vacation for the year at the beginning of the year but I have only seen this enforced at larger companies, smaller companies are usually fine if you give them 1 month notice. If your employer agrees, you can take any leftover vacation out as extra salary at the end of the year but larger companies almost never let you do that, they force you to take your vacation. It is also illegal to work or go into the office while you are on vacation.
As far as I know, the same policies exist across most of the EU. The idea that in the USA you are lucky to actually get vacation is mind boggling. Any company above 50 employees here will force their workers to take their 1 month of vacation every year to avoid additional bookkeeping.
Also, the yearly vacation does not include the national holidays which are paid if they fall on a working day (and the day before a national holiday is usually a half day but with full pay).
It's good to see the USA step forward bit-by-bit but honestly, the idea that this is something novel is laughable.
(Score: 3) by francois.barbier on Thursday October 30 2014, @01:31PM
Confirmed from Belgium, and I know it's the same in France, Germany, the Netherlands, with small variations.
Can confirm that too...
Moreover, if the national holiday falls on a week-end, you can actually take back an additional vacation day whenever you want.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 30 2014, @03:08PM
Moreover, if the national holiday falls on a week-end, you can actually take back an additional vacation day whenever you want.
Damn, you win that one. If a national holiday falls on a weekend here in Estonia we don't get to take it out another day. I know Finland will move national holidays to the next Monday though if they fall on a weekend so everyone gets a day off guaranteed for each holiday. Sadly Estonia has one of the fewest number of national holidays in the EU but luckily I work according to the Swedish holiday calendar :)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 30 2014, @01:46PM
In the US, whenever a bill increasing worker's rights such as raising the minimum wage, extending unemployment benefits, or mandating minimum sick days comes up for debate, conservatives point at Europe as an example of what we could be headed for.
As a moderate I have mixed feelings. I think that Europe may have gone a bit too far in the direction of healthy work/life balance, given the intensity of global competition, and the fact that developing countries can offer "good enough" labor for tasks that are well understood at a fraction of the rates of the US, Canada and Western Europe.
We need to work hard to keep the innovations coming.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by CRCulver on Thursday October 30 2014, @02:34PM
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mojo chan on Thursday October 30 2014, @06:18PM
Nissan in Japan has found the same thing. The company was having a hard time in the 90s and staff were not taking vacation time. A new boss came in and mandated that they take all their available holiday every year, and it improved productivity and morale.
In Europe it's even better. If you get ill on your day off it counts as a sick day, not as part of your holiday allowance.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Friday October 31 2014, @09:57AM
I read a study some years ago (around 2006ish) that showed that, if you're doing any occupation that requires that you use your brain, most people reach peak productivity at around 20 hours a week. Up to about 30-35, they start making mistakes that offset the productivity gains from spending more time working. Over that, the lost productivity from mistakes is more than the increased productivity from more hours spent working. This is especially true for something like programming, where a single bug can lose you many hours of debugging time. Being rested and relaxed has a massive impact on productivity, much more so than turning up at work for more hours.
These numbers were for sustained productivity - working 40+ hours one week and then a bit less the next week was also fine, as long as it didn't happen very often.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 1) by evk on Thursday October 30 2014, @03:41PM
Can't really see how you could overdo a "healthy work/life balance". If it's unhealthy is not good for anyone. And if it tips to far to the non-work side it's no longer in balance.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by hoochiecoochieman on Thursday October 30 2014, @03:53PM
Yes, you could have decent work/life balance, better health, more productivity, and nobody wants that.
The economies in Europe are the most productive in the world. Why can't we take advantage of the productivity to make life better and easier for every one? Developing countries have shit productivities, hence they have to work a lot more and can't have lots of goodies we have here. But ask any of the guys in those countries if they want vacations and free health care and he'll tell you "fuck yes!". As those countries develop, people will demand to work less and in better conditions, and have decent public services. Unless they're heavily brainwashed for decades into volunteer servitude, like Americans seem to have been.
That's utterly false. Innovation doesn't come from overworked slaves, quite the opposite.
I give you a good example, my own country, Portugal. We have the same labour laws than the rest of EU, however the enforcement is a big problem around here, since we have week unions and very strong corporate lobbies. Portuguese work a lot more than the rest of the Europeans, but we make shit salaries, and our productivity is low. Since Portuguese workers have problems enforcing their rights, the leaderships are usually lazy and incompetent, and chosen by entitlement, not merit.
Managing a project in Germany is challenging because workers will be very expensive, refuse to work overtime and will bust your balls if you change stuff in the middle of the project. In Portugal it's easy, you just force people to work unpaid overtime and do whatever the fuck you want. Who do you think will feel more pressure to be innovative, the German company or the Portuguese one?
Actually the US are a notable exception in the whole picture. You have both high productivity and work many hours. But it just means that you don't get to enjoy your productivity, because the top echelon vacuums a lot more money from the economy than in the other developed countries.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 30 2014, @05:39PM
The European workers might take longer holidays funded by the robot productivity.
Whereas the US workers will be screwed while the top echelon sucks even more from the robots.
(Score: 2) by hoochiecoochieman on Thursday October 30 2014, @03:24PM
I can confirm here in Portugal, too.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Friday October 31 2014, @09:53AM
If your employer agrees, you can take any leftover vacation out as extra salary at the end of the year but larger companies almost never let you do that, they force you to take your vacation
I briefly worked for a company in the UK that had an odd combination of these rules. If you had unused vacation time at the end of your contract, then you were paid at the normal rate. If you booked the vacation but then came into work, then you were counted as having taken the vacation, but were paid at the overtime rate (50% over the normal salary, I seem to recall). For someone on a short-term contract like me, it made sense to book the last few days as vacation and end up being paid more for them.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 1) by TheCastro on Thursday October 30 2014, @01:54PM
I work for a pretty decent employer on the vacation front, 8 holidays off, you start off with 18 personal days (which include your sick and paid time off etc.). The sad part is most of my friends think that is a lot, and knowing what Europeans get makes me jealous.
(Score: 2) by arashi no garou on Thursday October 30 2014, @02:34PM
Most local government jobs around here (Georgia, USA) offer excellent paid time off packages. At my last government job, a local sheriff's office, I started with a week of paid vacation and earned additional paid vacation and paid sick leave every month. Vacation was capped at two weeks for your first five years on the job, but sick leave was uncapped, and you were allowed to use sick leave to augment your paid vacation as long as you didn't abuse it (i.e. you could take your two weeks vacation and add a week of sick leave with no problem, but you couldn't take a two month "vacation" of sick leave). Add in the excellent health insurance and life insurance benefits and it made for a sweet gig, even though the pay was low and the job was boring.
At my current job as the IT technician for a small business, I was initially offered a week of vacation per year, a flexible schedule where I could leave early for one day a week as long as there were no emergencies going on, and guaranteed performance based raises. No sick leave or health insurance, but the flexible schedule helped with the former and my wife's insurance takes care of the latter. I left the sheriff's office to take this offer, and now a little over a year later my vacation has been discontinued indefinitely (thankfully I was able to use it within my first year), raises for all employees have been discontinued indefinitely, and a few months ago my flexible schedule was changed to a rigid schedule with no leaving early, even if there is nothing to do all day. They threw those perks at me initially to talk me into working for them (no other employees got vacation time, flexible hours, or a raise guarantee), and now they've pulled a bait and switch that makes no sense.
If they wanted to make me quit I'd almost understand, but I've been told by every person above me that I'm vital to the company and they don't know what they would do without me (as in, where would they find someone who can do what I do for the low pay I accepted).
I can't wait to get back into a government meat-puppet job again, no matter how boring it can get.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 30 2014, @04:48PM
US federal employee, here. We are given paid time off that is accumulated per (2 week) pay period. When you just begin you are given 4 hours paid leave every pay period. After three years on the job this increases to 6 hours per pay period. After ten years, it increases to 8 hours per pay period. While we are not required to take time off, we are not allowed to accumulate more than 240 hours of leave time. Thus, we have a "use or lose" policy: at the end of the calendar year if you have more than 240 hours accumulated you lose however many hours of your accumulated leave time it takes to bring you back down to 240 hours. This gives us strong incentive to take a certain number of vacation leave days each year. We also get federal holidays off, of course.
(Score: 1) by J053 on Friday October 31 2014, @01:23AM
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday October 30 2014, @02:00PM
I've been in jobs that went like The Office. At the worst such job, everyone spent all their time fighting over what we should do, trying to be the man with the plan, seeing that as the ticket to job security. Some even did all they could to sabotage others, for fear of being shown up. Owing to that paralysis, we never actually did anything. Was a great deal of stress to have your ideas and plans torn to shreds for political reasons and not on any merit or lack thereof, and to know that the situation could not last, that sooner or later if we didn't move, we would all be fired.
A 2 week break from that was spoiled by knowing I would be going back when vacation was over. In hindsight, I should have simply quit that job. Run, don't walk, to the exit. It was that bad. The manager was profoundly, wrongly cynical in a way that disallowed honesty and derailed all efforts at planning, and made it impossible to function. He was the worst saboteur of the bunch. And the boss was an insecure slave driver who didn't understand the field, and when he wasn't flogging people for more progress, would flog people over petty rulebook knowledge to try to demonstrate he was still in charge, or maybe just to make himself feel better, who knows? He wanted to forward march, but had no idea which way to go and didn't want to take advice, probably for fear of looking like he was no longer in charge. He would march forward anyway, kicking ass to make people march with him, which only made things worse than if he had done nothing. Ultimately, it did end badly. We did farcically poorly at the big progress meeting. I still have trouble believing how lame the boss's presentation was. Right at the start of his turn, he was asked what our goal was, what was our plan. His response? "Figuring that out is the first item on our schedule." Wow, just wow. Months of effort, and not only have we not settled on a plan, we don't even have any?! Our company attempted to blame the peons and sacked us all, but it didn't work, they still lost the contract.
(Score: 3) by nitehawk214 on Thursday October 30 2014, @03:04PM
I used to work for a company that was spun off of a bank. It was required that each year employees take at least 5 of their vacation days in row at least once.
When I asked about the reasoning behind this, the explanation was that it was an old banking tactic to detect people skimming by looking at anomalies in the daily numbers.
My manager had a good laugh when I replied, "Well that is stupid, it would be quite easy for me to create a script to perform skimming when I was away." Considering our favorite movie was Office Space, we agreed that some mundane detail would mess up this plan.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 1) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 30 2014, @07:17PM
I'm in Ireland, in my last crappy job I had 26 holiday days.
Taking them all was mandatory, use them or loose them and your employer is not allowed to pay you cash in place of them...
This is to stop employers from insisting that workers not take holidays.
I was working closely with people who where working in an investment bank, they were required to use up 10(2 calender weeks) of their annual leave days in one block to allow for checking their work for any funny business.
Oh and those 26 days were not counting public holidays... so about 36 in total.
(Score: 1) by meisterister on Friday October 31 2014, @12:50AM
I'm sure that it's an uncommon occurrence for your boss to come to you and say, "Relax, goddamnit!"
(May or may not have been) Posted from my K6-2, Athlon XP, or Pentium I/II/III.