It's definitely a difficult cultural thing to balance, but if you're conscious of the delicacy required there are definitely ways to mitigate it. I worked at a

It's definitely a difficult cultural thing to balance, but if you're conscious of the delicacy required there are definitely ways to mitigate it. I worked at a large 'startup' (>1000 employees) that had an 'unlimited vacation' policy. One way they managed it was that at their quarterly company-wide meetings, they would give out a 'high performer' award to a few individuals that was basically them being told to take a vacation. The fine print was essentially "here's a few thousand bucks, but you can only use it on vacation-related expenses".