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The only way is for leadership to model the desired behavior. Do not email people on weekends or odd hours. Do not appear online. Do not check in any code. Talk

The only way is for leadership to model the desired behavior. Do not email people on weekends or odd hours. Do not appear online. Do not check in any code. Talk about your nice relaxing weekend spent gardening. When you see people working say, "I'm not working weekends, so why should you?" Make sure the other leaders are doing the same. This is going to get most people on board, but a few will still have deeply ingrained bad habits. When you see it, just tell them, "there's no reward at this company for burning out. If you want to work that hard, it's your business, but please do not bother your teammates or set the expectation they should be trying to keep up with your hours." I firmly believe this is the most healthy and productive for most people. A few people live to work so you might as well let them while trying to insulate your normal folks.

mr-wendel 4y ago
I'll start with a confession. Based on below, I'm #3, all the way, and I think #2 is the absolute worst. I see it from an accounting point of view: you've got a liability on the books the moment the benefit is promised and it's in everyone's best interest to have it realized on a steady schedule. 1. Individual allocations with strict "rollover" policies. 2. Unlimited, but reasonable, timeoff policies. 3. Individual allocations with 0% carry-over: if you would lose it, it's forced upon you. Please don't make us drag it out. So that said, I don't see how you have a prayer in the world of avoiding "drag it out" unless you have a management culture thats firmly based in what dougmwne suggests: lead by example and you won't have to fight the extremes (which are unlikely to give anyway) for the sake of the core quite so much. It's also more compatible with highly-geographical laws around unused vacation payouts. If you think your organization is winning, by minimizing these kind of benefits... I think you're definitely losing and it's putting your most dedicated talent at long-term risk for short term gain.
muzani 4y ago
This is how it works where we are. In our onboarding, HR showed us a tutorial of how to apply for leave, using her own account. "Oh see I took a month off this year, and it's okay if you need to take time off for yourself." My manager was also on leave then - he left a welcome message saying to contact X for GitHub access, even though it would be fast for him to do it now. That's quite impactful when you're given the message that early, that the people in charge of rejecting your time off encourage you to do it. There's also something on the wiki warning us about burnout. There's plenty of talks on avoiding burnout. Nobody attends them, but we get the message that it's costly to the company when it happens and not something to be proud of.

mr-wendel 4y ago

I'll start with a confession. Based on below, I'm #3, all the way, and I think #2 is the absolute worst. I see it from an accounting point of view: you've got a liability on the books the moment the benefit is promised and it's in everyone's best interest to have it realized on a steady schedule. 1. Individual allocations with strict "rollover" policies. 2. Unlimited, but reasonable, timeoff policies. 3. Individual allocations with 0% carry-over: if you would lose it, it's forced upon you. Please don't make us drag it out. So that said, I don't see how you have a prayer in the world of avoiding "drag it out" unless you have a management culture thats firmly based in what dougmwne suggests: lead by example and you won't have to fight the extremes (which are unlikely to give anyway) for the sake of the core quite so much. It's also more compatible with highly-geographical laws around unused vacation payouts. If you think your organization is winning, by minimizing these kind of benefits... I think you're definitely losing and it's putting your most dedicated talent at long-term risk for short term gain.

muzani 4y ago

This is how it works where we are. In our onboarding, HR showed us a tutorial of how to apply for leave, using her own account. "Oh see I took a month off this year, and it's okay if you need to take time off for yourself." My manager was also on leave then - he left a welcome message saying to contact X for GitHub access, even though it would be fast for him to do it now. That's quite impactful when you're given the message that early, that the people in charge of rejecting your time off encourage you to do it. There's also something on the wiki warning us about burnout. There's plenty of talks on avoiding burnout. Nobody attends them, but we get the message that it's costly to the company when it happens and not something to be proud of.