Interesting… engaging…disengaging., all at once. could this work in CBS?
Read this week that Richard Branson is allowing Virgin staff to take as much holiday leave as they like, when they like, without having to pre book, and I was thinking about what the company culture would need to be like for this to be a remotely viable option.
Effectively what is being done here is a trust based holiday policy. You can take as much time off as you want, and the idea here is that, because the system isn’t policed in that respect, it becomes about trust, and, deep down inside, we all just wanted to be trusted.
Like the honesty box for the out of hours bar at the ski hotel, or, perhaps, the option Coldplay gave a while back of paying whatever you liked for their new release, the system only works if everyone is reading from the same book. Interestingly, whilst everyone could have paid 1p for the album, the vast majority didn’t, although I can’t find out what the average price paid for the album sold via this option was. It is, perhaps, telling that there haven’t been too many other bands using this method of selling albums and so, perhaps, that tells its own story.
Anyway, back to holidays..
Look around you now, if you’re in the office. You will be able to see at least one person in your company that, much as you may like them, simply doesn’t have their heart and soul in it, and who you know would just be taking every Friday off if they could. It might even be you! Likewise, you will look around and see colleagues who are currently being turfed out of the office by security early December as they’ve not take any holiday that year and can’t carry it over, so there are both extremes present. That could also be you! Surely its those two extremes which mean the system simply won’t work without some sort of basic controls in place.
The issue here is fairness, surely? Mr Branson’s web site states that the staff can do this because it is assumed their time off won’t damage their business, or, indeed, the careers of the employees. So, then, how do we define damage. Surely, by definition, if I can take 6 months off from the company without it having any impact on the business, I could leave the company without it having any impact on the business? If I am a hard working, dedicated employee, every day I am not in the office has some sort of impact, or is that entirely the point, there IS no right time to take holiday without impacting the company, hence nobody who really cares will make use of this option. In fact, nobody will take any holiday so its actually MORE restrictive as you end up feeling guilty when you do take time off.
We know when people are off work, colleagues have an increased workload to cover that absence, and so is the idea here that, because we care about our colleagues, we’re not going to put them in a position whereby they’re being put out by us? Again, we can probably think of one or two more unhappy colleagues who really don’t care that much, and its because, for the vast majority of companies, you don’t have 100% of your work force happy in their roles that this just won’t work in a fair manner to all.
There will always be someone who takes every Friday off work, because they can, and, at the end of the year, if someone has worked 9 weeks of the year less than one of their colleagues, how can that not affect their career? Why promote someone who is in the office 20% less of the time than a colleague but is paid exactly the same? More to the point, when you do promote the colleague, how can you then prove its NOT because the other took the time off? What about part time workers, who do 1 3 or 4 day weeks? Do they then become full time employees and continue to work as normal?! Again, its the edges of this which cause the issues, 80% of people fit nicely into the standard mould, and surely you’re just going to alienate them by seeming to favour those who, quite frankly, take the mickey.
That’s going to be the problem here. If someone has had 3 months off and got an excellent performance review, and you’ve taken 2 weeks off and got a good review, how can you not feel aggrieved? Or like there isn’t any point you being in the office??
I applaud the principle of the idea of freedom of holiday, but there needs to be some sort of control system in place. Whether that’s to say you can have 20 days a year extra holiday to take as you want, but any more has to be arranged, or that you have to give notice so your workload can be scheduled better; I can’t think of any one week period where I wouldn’t have something that needed to be moved, whether that be a meeting, a deadline, whatever.
The fact is that, surely, if you implement this sort of policy, the next time the trains are all not working, its pouring with rain and blowing a gale, and its a Monday morning, isn’t there a decent chance you could have most of the office taking a holiday day? I know I would if I could?! That, surely, has got to impact your business, whether that be by overloading everyone else, or by simply not being able to get everything done that needs to be. Summer holidays are hard enough to try and staff properly, and you know when you’re going to be short, I just can’t see how this will work, much as I’d love it to.
Another key issue is whether this holiday is paid or not? If its unpaid then that may make more sense, as you’ve had to make a personal sacrifice, but they state that holiday doesn’t have to be tracked so that definitely implies its paid leave. As someone who has taken a 6 month unpaid sabbatical to go travelling a few years back, the idea of it having be paid leave would have been amazing, but why would I ever have bothered going back? How long can you be away on holiday before someone realises you’re not going back? How can you fire someone when you’ve explicitly said their use of holidays will not affect their employment prospects? One suspects there has to be some small print somewhere!
What do you all think? As much holiday as you like, a great idea or one which sounds too good to be true and as we all know, when it sounds too good to be true it normally is.
Hasn’t stopped me emailing my boss to ask for this policy to be implemented here, mind you! Think I know what the answer will be….
Source: LinkedIn
