New Employment Perk: Unlimited Paid Vacation


Only 1% of employers in the US offer this perk, but the number is growing. In some firms, employees can take as much paid time off as they feel they need:

By showing that they trust their workers, these employers say, they are cultivating a culture of even deeper trust. Though the practice is still experimental, these companies say they've seen little abuse of the system so far. [...]

Dov Seidman, chief executive officer of advisory-services firm LRN, acknowledges that since the company implemented unlimited vacation three years ago, some workers have "made the wrong decision" and missed meetings to take time off. Still, such mistakes are rare, he says, and "no one's ever gone for four weeks."

Mr. Seidman says his roughly 300 employees have become more thoughtful and considerate about taking time off as a result of the policy. Many of them now feel compelled to check in with their peers before scheduling vacations, he says.

This is a brilliant idea--one that will surely be adopted by farsighted, ingenious corporate visionaries. Of course, I'm thinking of Neatorama CEO Alex Santoso, a business giant of our age who has the entrepreneurial intuition to seize this opportunity immediately.

Link -via Dave Barry | Photo: Kamoteus


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Your experience confirmed my initial thoughts. Another thought - if you accumulate Personal Time Off and are laid off or perhaps leave the company in some other manner, you are often entitled to the cash equivalent of your accumulated PTO hours, depending on the laws of your area, or the custom of your company. When I was laid off from two high-tech companies, in addition to my three months severance, my PTO was also cashed out. For the first company, my PTO gave me almost ten grand (I never used my PTO cause my director never charged my PTO account.)

This unlimited time off thing looks like a nifty way to skirt labor laws.
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I haven't thought of it, but, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

The system could be abused, but it would more likely be abused by people higher up the food chain than lower down. It would be easy for a manager to simply deny vacation entirely or greatly reduce it.
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As someone who has this "perk" at their company let me list the downsides, because honestly, I HATE this policy...
- You are never "entitled" to vacation, because you don't accumulate days. This means that it's up to your manager to approve or deny ANY vacation time.
- Since you never accumulate days, you can never bank vacation for a longer trip
- Since you never accumulate days, you can never get paid for unused vacation time, which is mandated by law (tricky!)
- Since you are not "entitled" to days off, most people actually take fewer days off, thus the company is kind of ripping you off.

Just my two cents and someone who's been cranky about not having defined "vacation" for the last 4 years...
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No one's ever gone for four weeks? I live in the UK and started this year with 44 days leave to take. I'm every year I roll leave over to the next year as I've no great need to take it.
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