So you are thinking of creating an unlimited vacation day policy at your company??
First step don’t listen to your friends – when I mentioned to friends that SEER was moving to unlimited vacation time, people often were like dude, you are making a big mistake. I get you wanna trust people and all, but how are you going to pull this off. We’ve had unlimited sick days for years, so this year we are rolling out unlimited vacation, and in its first 17 days I already see a potential snag.
Second step, find some parameters and get them down in writing, how long you can take off consecutively, when does managers discretion come into play, how much lead time you need to give when taking a lot of time off, how long you need to NOT take time off in between other longer vacations, etc.
Third step, when people abuse it, don’t change the policy, change the person!!
Welcome to the club, unlimited vacation is NOT commonplace, you are already well on your way to communicating to you team that you trust them! The fact that you are even thinking about it makes you a good egg, even if you don’t do it.
But don’t be naive like me, expect abuse. It’s going to happen, the real question is what are you going to do about it?
Say someone does freelance (which personally I have some issue with if it is not disclosed and they take advantage of unlimited “vacation” or unlimited “sick days” telling you they are going to recharge or take care of a sick parent, when in actuality they are double dipping, getting paid while off, and then getting paid for side work. That is a lapse in character.
As John Wooden said…“The true test of a man’s character is what he does when no one is watching”. So hire people for whom doing such a thing runs against every fiber of their being.
Abuse of policies like that are the kind of thing that causes a company to not do unlimited vacation policies. I would have never thought of this as a threat if it wasn’t for something that opened my eyes to the potential for abuse of an unlimited vacation policy.
Someone who does this, and has their teammates cover for them or put in a couple extra hours are being very poor team mates, but that is for another day.
So looking back at why I put an unlimited vacation policy in place, its because people work really hard at SEER and I wanted to signal that with policies, we TRUST them and in turn they will not abuse it.
And this is that inflection point in running a business, it stings. It stings so bad that many people abandon these policies, keeping with tradition, because its easier. Its easier to give 5 sick days and 3 weeks. Its easier to treat your people like widgets as if they don’t have their own hopes and dreams. FIGHT THAT! Never allow cynicism to taint the way you look at the people you got into battle with every day.
When you hit these forks in the road, don’t take the easy route of ending the policies that make you unique, start firing!!! Its funny how we overreact to the negative, I think its natural to want to remove perks and go with something that is easier. Yet when you get rid of the perks for 99% of your company because 1% of the jerks abuse it. You lose. Your clients lose. Your team loses. You become just another “good” company vs being an exceptional one.
Never let one person break your trust to the point that you remove the perks for the 99% who don’t abuse it, because most don’t. Don’t let that make you jaded. You lose part of your desire to do whats right for your team when you let things like this eventually chip away at you. That is for ANY policy, sick days, vacation days, professional development budgets, anything.
I hope this post ranks well for unlimited vacation time policy (so if you are linking to it gimme some love on it), because I think you guys, the people who get to this page because you were looking for policies are most likely considering it. And if you’ve read this far, I hope I opened your eyes to the abuse that can happen (don’t be naive), and I’m here to say DO IT ANYWAY!