Unlimited Vacation

If you are like most small business owners you probably don’t take a lot of vacations. We all know we should take more but things come up. When I do go on vacation I relax and come back to work refreshed. I must say I don’t like to take too much time away because, frankly I get bored. Maybe that’s because I love my work. I also know other business owners who feel the same way. Not surprising! What is surprising to many is a recent study of employees regarding vacation time. The study by a staffing firm called The Creative Group asked office employees who were not executives how much vacation time they would take if they were offered unlimited vacation. Nearly 56% said it would not matter if they were offered unlimited time off. The time they would take off would remain the same. 38% said they would take more time off. Think about it. The majority of these employees would not take advantage of the extra time. It has many scratching their heads. In fact, I saw this story reported on a number of news outlets and the anchors seemed almost incredulous. I am not surprised. I think some do not give employees enough credit. Good employees know how much they are needed. They know that we face deadlines and recognize that when they are on vacation those deadlines are still there… but with fewer people to meet them. This is especially true for small and medium size businesses. Employees of a small business, if they work for a good company, believe they have more control over their work. They do have more control than a large company where there may be lots of layers of management. Employees also get more responsibility. I believe they would not take advantage of the extra time off because they know it might jeopardize the work. Of course there is another side to this story. I think that there are other reasons that employees might not like the concept of an unlimited vacation policy. Many might feel if they take more time off they are seen as not being serious about the work. They might be labeled slackers and not worthy of more responsibility or a promotion. Some might fear that taking too much time off could cost them their job. Right now there are only a few companies that have this type of policy so it is probably too early to know the results. The Society for Human Resource Management says it is about 1 percent of companies. I am guessing that these early adopters will have a lot to say as time goes on and the rest of us will learn from them.