The "take off whatever time you want" vacation policy has its problems. For me, it was the tension between my urge to skip work on a beautiful summer afternoon

The "take off whatever time you want" vacation policy has its problems. For me, it was the tension between my urge to skip work on a beautiful summer afternoon and my Yankee work ethic. Some days it was torture but I never did take an afternoon off. :{ With most (all?) good employees your problem isn't them taking off too much time, the problem is getting them to take their vacation when they should. From a strictly business sense, vacation's purpose is to refresh the employee and make them more productive. If you're paying for vacation days and they aren't getting used, you aren't getting what you payed for. I think a vacation policy should encourage people to take time off without feeling guilty. Here's my proposal: Your get 4 weeks a year the day you start (pro-rated) and thereafter on January 1st. You don't have to take them all but they expire at the end of the year. This reduces the mental justification for not using your vacation ("I'll use it next year") yet you can still take a vacation in January if you want to.