Richard Branson 'Unlimited Holiday'

[Gwadien]

Thought this was quite an interesting thing to say;

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-29356627

I can see it having it's benefits in project based works where there's small teams, to decide when the perfect time to take a break from work is.

'Right, okay, we've finish this job, let's all take a week off, come back and get on the new project'

In theory, I suppose people will leave work, coming back and being a lot more refreshed for the next 'project' rather than taking a holiday in the middle of a big job or something?

Thoughts?

 

[Raven]

Terrible idea, people will feel the more holiday they take the worse they appear meaning some people may end up taking less than the usual 25-30 days.

 

[old.Tohtori]

That's basically how it works in game companies. People go on holiday when they know they won't be needed and the project is at stage XYZ.

You can't have "as much holiday as you want", need the vacation days ofcourse.

 

[Gwadien]

Terrible idea, people will feel the more holiday they take the worse they appear meaning some people may end up taking less than the usual 25-30 days.

Hmm, not necessarily to be honest, if you work in a matrix-setup company where there's multiple teams working on multiple projects, it's easy enough to organise when would be the suitable time to take time off work.

Not sure if you read the article, but he says he doesn't care when people take off the time, he doesn't want them to let anyone know, he just wants them to go, so long as it doesn't ruin the business and their careers he's not interested, this may seem quite careless, or as you say 'TAKE ALL THE TIME YOU WANT OFF' - But you won't have a job.

Tbh, so long as people don't take the biscuit, I could see it working, I think all the 'modern businesses' such as Google, Netflix, Spotify etc etc are turning a lot more radical towards their business plans, maybe because they have huge profit margins so they can afford to experiment and seem niche, but if this leaks into the more (as Branson puts it) draconian businesses it could mean happier employers and therefore more hard working employees?

 

[Raven]

You haven't worked in a competitive environment I see

It may work when companies have more money than the know what to do with or the public sector but with normal private companies if you have a member of staff or a department that can afford to take unlimited holiday then you will cut back on staff. The first to go will probably be the person there the least. People would therefore try to take the least holiday, meaning plenty of people will go without.

Holiday is sacred as far as I am concerned and my employer actually insists everyone takes their full entitlement. Last year my boss actually complained to me that I had holiday left over and hadn't taken a full week all year. I hadn't meant for that to happen, it just kind of panned out like that with workload and whatnot. This year I booked the holiday off long in advance and made sure I had a couple of weeks off.

Edit, the lower down you go in job quality (or whatever you want to call it) the quicker the employer would be to make those cuts) drones are 10 a penny.

While it sounds nice it is basically unworkable.

 

[caLLous]

How the hell are you supposed to plan cover for people and whatever when you have no idea how long they'll be away?

 

[miri]

Unless you work in some office utopia, there's no way this will ever work. Either bosses will abuse it by making people feel like they can't progress in their careers if they take too much holiday, or arseholes you work with will abuse it by taking excess holiday and fucking over colleagues causing them to have to do much more work.

 

[old.Tohtori]

All the against comments come down to one thing though; people abusing it.

If they inform people(co-workers etc, not necessarily bosses) that "I'm off for two weeks", while knowing they're not needed and don't expect that they can be out for 3 months and still have a job(aka abuse it), then in certain companies this works fine. It's just moving the responsibility of holidays to the workers. It's like free candy, sure have as much as you like, but don't come whining when your tummy hurts.

Ofcourse it only works if you don't pay for extra holiday days and you only get paid for earned holi-days.

I'm betting Valve has a similar system, especially since they have a free enviroment to being with(which also people said couldn't work ).

 

[caLLous]

All the against comments come down to one thing though; people abusing it.

Um, that wasn't my reason in the slightest.

My reason is the logistics of trying to cover for people who are on holiday. A lot of people do "generic" things within an organisation but a lot of people also do very specific things (that they are specifically trained for). Replacing those people for however long the actual employee wants to go on holiday for would be an HR nightmare. You can't just put the "holiday cover" people under the stairs when the employee decides to come back to work - they presumably have jobs to do as well.

 

[Gwadien]

Um, that wasn't my reason in the slightest.

My reason is the logistics of trying to cover for people who are on holiday. A lot of people do "generic" things within an organisation but a lot of people also do very specific things (that they are specifically trained for). Replacing those people for however long the actual employee wants to go on holiday for would be an HR nightmare. You can't just put the "holiday cover" people under the stairs when the employee decides to come back to work - they presumably have jobs to do as well.

That's the thing though, Clearly, this sort of system wouldn't work if you had a routine job, but if you were given a task to over a lengthy period of time, then once that task was done, you'd be given another, that's the sort of scenario where this sort of system could work, and that's why it probably does in industries as Toht mentions, you wouldn't have to 'grind' your job into the earth, and I'd imagine especially in game companies, it's much like playing a game, if you do so much of it the game becomes dull and boring, so a break may give you a burst of energy into your new project.

As I say though, I'm not implying that this will work in all industries, I just think this new way of operating a company could be leaked into other businesses in some way or another.

I don't know what people do here, but I know jobs like Engineering where different departments will run different jobs, so it would be relatively easy to say, right, let's stop here, and continue after our break.

I think the main point that Branson is trying to raise is that people are booking holidays for the sake of getting away from the office, but in effect, it's not helping the person at all, because they're still thinking about work, whilst on holiday, and probably still dealing with work, whereas if you could say, I'm done with what I'm doing, I need a break now, cya, it may give people that holiday when they actually -need- it.

 

[Job]

This bolaks only applies to people who have it allready.
I've served enough Big macs boss...I'm off to borneo for 6 weeks.

 

[Draylor]

Its just PR pish, guess he hadnt been getting enough attention recently and this was quick/cheap to come up with.

I'm sure he'll be rolling this out to his airline staff any day now ....

 

[DaGaffer]

Hmm, I note it doesn't say unlimited paid holiday, so there's a natural cap for most people right off the bat, and longer-term unpaid sabbaticals aren't that unusual.

To be honest, if you do the maths on this it probably works fine; lots of places I've worked people haven't taken all their holiday anyway; I had to kick my staff out of the place in my last job.

 

[Yoni]

I have found that once I became FD it worked like this anyway... I take holiday when I need and want to and don't take holiday when there is stuff to be done... Nothing new.

 

[soze]

It could not work in my job as there is never a day let alone a week where I know I am not busy in advance.

My friend does do project work for his company and it could work for him. His team sit with a client and design the system then they pass it to the coders who build the application. During this time they sit around waiting. Rather than booking a Holiday in January and potentially going away in the middle of a busy period this would be better for his department.

But the coders and helpdesk staff at his place can't say the same as they can be called on to fix problems for any of the systems they support. I imagine the groups of people this would work for is few and far between.

My place used to buy your holiday back if you did not take it at time and a half. But one year some people were cashing in 20+ days so now if you don't use it you lose it. Loads of people come crying in December that they can't book their holiday. So this year there was a reminder in July and September.