Virgin Group CEO Richard Branson is taking a cue from Netflix and giving 'unlimited vacation days' to salaried employees in Virgin.
Working arrangements have dramatically changed in the last few years, giving rise to a number of individuals who no longer adhere to nine-to-five schedules. Given that work has become flexible, shouldn't this kind of flexibility apply as well to vacation policies?
That's the question Branson posted on his blog in the Virgin website.
Branson first learned about this non-traditional setup in Netflix from his daughter. Holly shared with him an article about what the company was doing, saying "it would be a very Virgin thing to do to not track people's holidays."
In recent years, Netflix has indeed grown. There is surely a variety of factors at play for their success but their policy (or the lack of it) on vacations stands out.
So how does this unusual vacation policy go?
It's simple, saying that all employees in the company are allowed to take vacations whenever they want and for as long as they want. There's no need to ask for approvals first either. Whether an employee feels like taking a break for a few hours or a few weeks, it is fine.
However, the setup follows the assumption that an employee's absence will not in any way be detrimental to the company. That's basically the only condition employees need to consider before going off to sunny Mexico or wherever they want to go.
The arrangement sounds simple but downsides are still present. Lotte Bailyn, professor emeritus from the MIT Sloan School of Management, noted that little restriction may make employees less comfortable about taking vacations.
"Typically, without any guidelines or structures, people don't quite know what to make of this. They tend to fall back on expectations they have formed in previous terms," Bailyn said.
Society for Human Resource Management's Bruce Elliott points out though that 'unlimited vacation days' can work for companies who are more project-oriented. "They can say, ‘I just finished up a project, now is the perfect time to take a week off before the next one starts,'" he explained. Those with fixed day-to-day schedules, however, will find it harder to implement unrestrained vacations for its employees.
In an excerpt from his book The Virgin Way, Branson shares that Virgin in the U.S. and in the U.K. will be adopting Netflix's vacation policy. If it succeeds as expected, all Virgin subsidiaries will follow suit.
"It is always interesting to note how often the adjectives ‘smart' and ‘simple' describe the cleverest of innovations - well, this is surely one of the simplest and smartest initiatives I have heard of in a long time," he wrote.
