Turning Down an Unlimited Vacation

One of the latest trends in company benefits schemes has been the Unlimited Vacation Policy, where employees are encouraged to take as much time off as they want so long as they get their jobs done. This generosity could potentially come back to bite companies in their profit margins – but only if employees take full advantage of the benefit.

A new poll suggests that companies have little to fear from unlimited vacation policies, for now.

According to the staffing experts at The Creative Group, a majority of executives (72%) and workers (56%) recently polled said the amount of vacation they would take would remain the same if there were no limit to their personal holidays.

Most employees’ vacation schedules would still be ruled by the deadlines and demands of their jobs – even if they had more flexibility in determining them.

It’s even worse for managers, who want to be seen as the kind of leaders who stay on the jobs and get things done.

Diane Domeyer, executive director of The Creative Group, thinks that managers should lead the way toward implementing the new policies by taking time off themselves and encouraging their staff to do the same.

But it would take a sea of change in the basic culture of most companies for that to happen. After all, today’s managers didn’t get where they are by leading the company in vacation days taken.

Within our workaholic work culture, employees would likely see unlimited vacation policies as a kind of test to see who is really serious about their jobs.

For now at least, most of them would continue to save their vacation days, and stay on the job.