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I think it’s safe to say that Google’s unique corporate culture was a game-changer in how employers and employees view their workplace environments. The company’s Googleplex HQ sports over a dozen cafes, 24/7 gym access, washers and dryers, a bowling alley, and an employees-only sports park. With so many convenient amenities, what 22-year-old brilliant comp sci graduate wouldn’t jump at the opportunity to join the fun?
A more experienced desk jockey might interpret these perks differently: namely, that Google provides them so their employees can work and be productive around the clock. According to some helpful Glassdoor reviews, there is indeed a tacit assumption that time-off at Google doesn’t exist. These testimonials complain of 3 am emails, no weekends off, and employees breaking down at their desks. Google has built a remarkable corporate culture that looks laid-back, challenging, and fun on paper, but which might be more accurately described as soul-crushing and life-destroying by many on the inside.
 The Google paradox seems an apt framing device for a newer trend: unlimited vacation, or “discretionary time off.” The prevalence of employers offering unlimited vacation has doubled since 2014, albeit only from 1% to 2% of all US employers. While the policy is much more common among agile startups where you might imagine working at a desk made of recycled plant fibers, LinkedIn notably introduced the policy in October 2015. More and more employers are buying in because American workers are taking less vacation time every year, so paying out unused vacation time when an employee retires or quits is becoming increasingly expensive. Project: Time Off, a coalition seeking to redefine employee well-being and self-care, estimates that US companies carried $224 billion in total unused vacation time on their books in 2015.* Unlimited vacation makes much more sense from a cost perspective in that employees only receive the vacation time they request, eliminating horded time off.
*Project: Time Off is an initiative started by the US Travel Association to “prove the value of time off for personal well-being, professional success, business performance, and economic expansion.” In other words, take more vacations. I smell a probable bias here.
Unlimited vacation time is an odd concept because, similarly to Google’s outlandish perks, it sets up the employer to be extremely generous but tacitly lays out expectations without a well-defined policy. I’d imagine that employees with unlimited vacation time often wonder whether they “should” or “can” take more vacation time. Experts advise workers laboring under these policies to scope out how much vacation everyone else is taking (usually 2-3 weeks plus an occasional day off per year) and stick to that. According to a recent article in Inc. magazine, discretionary time off policies can serve as a potential red flag for workers looking to jump ship in the near future. The magazine listed an example of an employee who took a two-week vacation, worked for a week, then tried to take another week off. When confronted, he broke down and confessed that he was planning on leaving the company in two weeks without notice.
Unlimited vacation is a new enough concept that it’s impossible to predict if it’ll stick around or fade away. Maybe there will come a day when job-seekers will regard companies who don’t offer unlimited time off as dinosaurs, or maybe the idea will become an excessive benefit offered in return for the expectation of all-nighters and workaholism, a la Google.
Stay tuned for more blogs about the changing nature of work and employee relations.
Image credit: Lulu Hoeller (CC BY 2.0)
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Re: Is Unlimited Vacation Time Too Much Of A Good Thing?
