Why we‘ve adopted unlimited holiday
For us, like the rest of the world, The pandemic has revolutionised how, where and when we all do our jobs. So, if working in the office from nine to five no longer applies, then why should strict annual leave (vacation) policies?
Over the last six months, we’ve been reassessing the type of company we want to be. What are our core values? Who are we? We believe in empowering our people and rewarding their effort, tenacity and loyalty with our trust. It was important to us that as a studio, we offer our team flexibility in their work lives in order to get the most out of their personal lives. We decided quite early on that the flexibility around holiday that we valued for ourselves as business owners should be extended to all employees…. UNLIMITED HOLIDAY.
The general idea is that we permit all salaried employees to take off whenever they want for as long as they want. 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.
We do still monitor holiday as its important as employers that we make sure that people are taking the statutory minimum as well as monitoring the overall success of the initiative. In addition, For longer stints, we ask that we are consulted so that we can adequately plan for how projects are workload are covered.
The bottom line is that for most people they will only take annual leave when they feel comfortable that they are up to date on their projects and that their absence will not in any way affect their team or the business.
If you are thinking about implementing an unlimited holiday policy, here are a few things you might also want to consider/implement:
Set a minimum expectation of how much leave employees should take.
Put in place clear procedures around the handover of work and clear communication that employees should leave work devices at home (or better still in the office) during their leave.
Adopt a ban on weekend working, except in exceptional circumstances.
Review your flexible working policy to ensure it is sufficiently flexible to reflect the post-pandemic dynamic.
Encourage the use of email signatures that acknowledge different working patterns and make it clear that the sender does not expect an out of hours response.
