
Three Vacation Policies - vinnyglennon
https://www.xaprb.com/blog/three-vacation-policies/
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ryan_j_naughton
The RAND Corporation studied their own 2000 academic quality statisticians and
researchers, and they found that even with generous vacation time (through the
traditional accrued vacation days practice), most researchers were so
engrossed in their work that they still didn't take their vacation.

They then analyzed their people and found that those who did take their
vacation performed better than those who didn't.

Subsequently, they wanted to figure out how to incentivize people to take
vacation, so they instituted sabbatical pay. Specifically, they pay employees
a bonus to take vacation.

In contrast, I work at a startup with unlimited vacation, and plenty of
employees are at risk of burnout because they rarely take their vacation --
ultimately hurting the company along with themselves.

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closeparen
In the financial sector, vacation is a fraud control. Reshuffling job duties
makes it easier for others to discover your misconduct, and temporarily
suspending your access makes it harder for you to cover it up.

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foobiekr
it would seem this would mostly only work if the vacation was imposed
randomly. otherwise you have plenty of time to plan it.

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Matticus_Rex
Even limiting the scope to things that can be covered up with some lead time
is a benefit.

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XenophileJKO
LinkedIn does this and it is great. Christmas week and July 4th week, the
majority of the company shuts down.

This is addition to "unlimited" vacation. I don't tend to account for the
shutdowns as coming out of my mental pool of vacation time that I like to take
every year.

What people don't usually realise though, is that a shutdowns is very
refreshing because you are not missing decisions and meetings etc. It means
you can truly disconnect for 2 weeks. When vacationing at other times, the
business it leaping forward and like it or not there is a draw to keep a
finger on it.

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sys_64738
One of the issues with 'unlimited' vacation is that when you leave your
employment you don't have any carryover anymore so the company doesn't pay you
for unused vacation.

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olliej
that's a design goal - not taking vacation is an _intended_ (not unintended as
this article claimed) byproduct.

I know this because my wife worked at a "unlimited time off" company, and even
though she gave them a heads up before accepting that she took a month or more
vacation a year, when she did that they turned around and had an all hands
about it was being abused.

My opinion on unlimited time off: if I can't say "I'm taking a year long
vacation" you need to give a finite limit. Nom company would agree to this
because unlimited time off is deliberately to avoid liability for earned
income.

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emperorcezar
> What about the person who heard your explanation of “just get your work
> done” as “if you’re highly productive, this is a part-time job with full-
> time pay?”

What about them. Maybe they are highly productive because they are "part-
time"?

Sounds like a good problem to have to me.

~~~
flax
Agree. Are you hiring to get work done, or to warm your office chairs for a
set amount of time?

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closeparen
Presumably you sought out and paid the premium for a highly capable employee
because you wanted their above-average capabilities. If they're just going to
meet the baseline and go home, the employer is wasting time and money relative
to someone cheaper and easier to find.

If the company hired a highly capable employee by _accident_ , or the employee
deliberately took a low-salary low-expectation position to "coast" in, then
maybe this line of reasoning holds up.

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JetSpiegel
Well, the manager sets the targets. If the employee is above average, just
increase their targets.

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jalgos_eminator
Ok, so how would "forced time off" be the middle ground between unlimited time
off and tracked time off. Isn't "forced time off" just tracked time off but
they require you to take it?

The only problem it solves is burned out employees, and I would argue that it
doesn't even fix that problem. The reason is that you can't force people to
take their minds off work, even if you force them to not physically be at
work.

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freeone3000
It could be done as a minimum vacation policy, instead of a maximum vacation?
As in, you must take this many days off, but if you need more they're
available?

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bigiain
I've seen it done as a "maximum accrued vacation time" policy. Once you got 30
days accrued, you had to book enough time off to reduce it to less than 30
days within the next three months.

Everybody hated that too. Being forced to take time off when you didn't
particularly want to, and not being able to "save up" enough vacation for a
really good ling trip away...

And, of course, those rules were regularly "bent" when it suited management,
but rigidly enforced otherwise...

(We typically accrue 20 days per year here in .au, so that pretty much means
after 18 months, if you haven't taken any vacation at all yet, you need to
take at least a week off in the next three months, and a week off every three
months thereafter.)

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gumby
I'm a fan of unlimited vacation because I don't have to track it on the B/S
but the "people think that means they shouldn't take _any_ " problem is real!

Worse, I had a candidate whose wife was worried that was what it really meant
(games industry, horrible QoL in most cases). Luckily he brought it up that
way, and as this was an internal referral we had her call people she knew
already in the company to verify that we weren't jerks.

~~~
wink
I don't know, in theory it sounds fine, but I really don't know how much I'd
take.

But coordinating with family, stuff that comes up and so on.. this is the
first year I've not spent 3 days from my (not unusual for Germany) 28 days
from last year and have to take them before the end of March so they don't get
lost... In other years I had 30 and could've easily used 10 more.

TLDR: I prefer the German model of 24-33 days and you're encouraged to take
them. Wouldn't hurt to increase the number, as long as they're really taken
90% of the time.

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gumby
The benefit of unlimited for employees is less the long vacations, but the ad
hoc needs for the off due to kid being sick, yourself being sick, etc.

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Argorak
That would better be covered by unlimited sick leave. Which, for example,
Germany has. Sick leave is covered to some extend (70% up to 30 days, fully
afterwards) by the health insurance. There's a clear separation between sick
leave and holidays, the first is a medical need, the second is for recreation.
(which leads to the interesting case that you can call in sick during your
holidays and get the days back)

Folding sick leave and holidays together is weird IMHO, as you personally
don't control the first, but do control the second.

~~~
gumby
Just having undifferentiated “paid time off” means you don’t have to look into
the employee’s personal life. It preserves your colleague’s privacy, has fewer
bureaucratic entities involved (insurance co, HR, usv) and you don’t get into
any argument about the legitimacy of an illness.

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mnm1
If people aren't taking enough vacation, your company's culture is shit. They
are afraid they will lose their jobs. Unlimited vacation is bullshit. A
European might expect to take six weeks while your shitty company expects them
to take two. Those differences cannot be resolved and eventually someone will
get fired. It should be illegal to claim unlimited vacation unless one could
literally be on vacation 100% of the time. Corporate assholes who coined this
term and put such practices into existence should go fuck themselves. It's
only there to look good on paper and save the company having to pay out
vacation. Once again, American workers getting fucked over so their bosses can
save a little money. In the long run, however, it's the business that gets
fucked by burnt out, unmotivated employees. Deservedly so considering the scum
who run most businesses. Those morons can't even see they are shooting
themselves as well as everyone else in the foot. Such stupidity is the norm
rather than the exception.

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CamTin
I'm in favor of treating workers better as much as anyone, but I'm dubious
about claims that European-style pro-worker policies are actually better for
the bottom line. The US has higher productivity than most EU states. Given
broadly similar capital and infrastructure, it would seem at least some of
this gap is due to people being more afraid to lose their jobs in the US than
in the EU.

Not only that, but couching pro-worker policies in terms of benefits for
ownership obscures the issue, and implicitly makes the argument that we should
only have pro-worker policies when they are also pro-ownership. That's
nonsense, since there are millions and millions of workers and we ostensibly
have a democracy.

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mnm1
Most but not all EU states. And many other EU states are very close to US
productivity while they're working less [http://time.com/4621185/worker-
productivity-countries/](http://time.com/4621185/worker-productivity-
countries/) So threatening worker's lives and not having a single day of
vacation or sick time are clearly not the reason for higher productivity.
They're just there to make people's lives more miserable and continue a
culture obsessed with control and enslavement. Anyway, productivity only
matters to business owners. Workers couldn't give a shit. They just can't get
their concerns addressed because we live in a plutocratic oligarchy which
hardly qualifies as a democracy.

~~~
CamTin
Yes, this was exactly my point. We shouldn't care about productivity: we want
affordable childcare, as much sick time as a doctor tells us to take, and
guaranteed vacations. Making the argument that ownership should give us these
things because it will make them richer is a losing game. They should be
forced to give us these things because we want them, and we're the ones in
charge.

~~~
mnm1
I totally agree with everything except the part where "we're the ones in
charge." Popular support for things like national healthcare and time off
hasn't yet made those things happen. As long as representatives take money
from the rich, it's dishonest to say that regular people have a say in a
republic like ours. By the rich, for the rich is more like it. Even the
Supreme Court agrees. What chance does popular support have against billions
of dollars spent on corruption... Oops I meant lobbying. Like there's a
difference.

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ThePadawan
European perspective: Of my legally mandated 4 wks of vacation, I have to take
at least one consecutive two-week chunk.

Obviously, I as the employee have to put in the request for that, and it 100%
depends on the company if they actually care enough about labor laws to
force/enable me to do so.

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cr1895
Really? Which country mandates that? Or do you mean it's employer-mandated?

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ystk
This is mandated in Article 8 of this ILO convention:
[http://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=NORMLEXPUB:12100:0::NO...](http://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=NORMLEXPUB:12100:0::NO::P12100_INSTRUMENT_ID:312277#A8)
[http://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=1000:11300:0::NO:11300...](http://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=1000:11300:0::NO:11300:P11300_INSTRUMENT_ID:312277)

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gumby
Don't forget that regardless of your other vacation policies, people in
finance should be required to take multi-week vacations each year, at
different times each year.

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rgoulter
_How do you handle the person who’s taking a lot more time off than others?_

I don't understand miscommunications like this between employer and employee.

I think the employer needs a more specific solution than "unlimited vacation"
if the concern about fixed-allowance leave was a lack of flexibility for shit-
happens situations.

I'd be curious about "compensated for work done".

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sacado2
Not taking paid vacation you're allowed to take is so weird. I mean, it's like
not taking your whole paycheck and leaving it to your employer.

