4 ms·
Done correctly, this is great for employees, their morale, and their productivity. I have seen it done at a number of companies. The only two I ever saw it don
by Communitivity 4y ago
Done correctly, this is great for employees, their morale, and their productivity.
I have seen it done at a number of companies. The only two I ever saw it done correctly were a less than 50 people consulting firm I worked at called MCCI (led by a bona fide genius named Terry Moore), and third-hand at a statistical analysis firm called SAS (known for many best practices at the time).
Put another way: In theory this will work, in practice theory often doesn't.
What I have usually seen is some combination of:
* Workers are informally racked and stacked according to the time they take off
* Workers get pushed to meet deadlines and PTO necessary for physical health, mental health, or to meet family commitments is denied until the deadline is met
* Burnout rates increase
* Worker churn increases, due to the above
That said, Microsoft has innovated in a number of ways and seems to be a decent company to work for now (depending on the team), from what I hear from friends. I hope they implement this well, and it serves as a blueprint for others.
Because we should all be able to stay home and recover when sick (and not infect others), and we should all be able to take a mental health day when needed. There will be people who abuse it, but that will wind up fairly obvious and those people can be fired after sufficient documentation of poor performance.
- P_I_Staker 4y agoI disagree that it would be obvious. In many cases, it could be really hard to tell. Also, supposing someone has a mental health problem, and actually does need tons of time... is that abuse? How do you handle that, and who gets to decide?
- gedy 4y agoI'm sure it's against "the rules", but I don't mind unlimited pto when your manager doesn't care if you track sick days or half day appointments, etc. When it's only planned vacation (and company is not a sweatshop) it works out fine.
- Sohcahtoa82 4y ago> Done correctly, this is great for employees, their morale, and their productivity. IMO, the "correct" way to do it is to establish a minimum amount of time off. I think it's reasonable to require people take at least 15 days of PTO, with at least 5 of them taken as a consecutive week. I also wonder if releasing statistics on how much PTO people took would help?
- jxidjhdhdhdhfhf 4y agoHaving accrued PTO essentially solves this problem. Either you take your assigned leave or if the business requires you to skip your vacation they can either give you an extra payout for it or they can let you roll PTO over into next year. In practice this mostly results in employees using all of their leave in a given year.
- Sohcahtoa82 4y agoIt's a mind game, really. If you give people 4 weeks PTO, they'll take 4 weeks. If you give 6 weeks, they'll take 6 weeks. If you give "unlimited", then they'll take 3 weeks because they're afraid of looking like they're abusing the benefit.