

MadMen Inspires HubSpot's New Vacation Policy - nate
http://www.hubspot.com/blog/bid/5455/MadMen-Inspires-HubSpot-s-New-Vacation-Policy

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brk
I'm interested in seeing how this works out for them.

We had the same policy at another startup I worked at years ago (Ucentric).
The problem was that while the idea was nice, it had a lot of "bugs".

One issue was people who either abuse the system, or more commonly are
perceived abusers by other people. People seem to like knowing that certain
perks and benefits (like time off) are rational and logical and auditable.
Sure, if all your employees are 100% dedicated top-tier people then this is
never an issue. The reality is that such a scenario becomes physically
impossible once you've grown beyond a core group.

The other, possibly bigger, issue had to do with when the time comes for a
layoff or dismissal (and again, one or the other will always happen). If you
have a defined vacation policy, then when an employee leaves there is a clear
accrued amount of unused vacation time that they are owed. OR, they have taken
time beyond their accrual amount and they owe the company $ from their last
paycheck. An employee who is leaving, voluntarily or involuntarily, in August
who has taken very little time off will generally end up pointing out all the
other employees who with less workload have been able to take 3 weeks off, and
thus this employee is owed 2+ weeks of accrued vacation time.

Basically this supposed glorious perk turned into an administrative nightmare
on several levels. Maybe it will work better now, but I'm skeptical.

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chrisgoodrich
This is trite and over-used as a "perk" to attract people to working at start-
ups.

The problem with this approach is that you can't have this type of policy
without an underlying culture that supports it.

This is straight out of the Netflix playbook:
<http://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664?src=embed>

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percept
Motley Fool's another one
(<http://www.fool.com/jobs/workplace/workplace04.htm>).

I'd guess that most adhere to the norm, but would be curious to read firsthand
information.

