What’s The Secret To A Happier Workplace?

Limitless Holidays: The Secret To A Happier Workplace?

Limitless Holidays. A foreign idea to most of us, but not to Richard Branson or those at Netflix Inc. Both companies already have a flexible working day policy with staff working longer than their required hours, by checking email at home and doing odd ends in the evening. So their thinking was, why not have flexible holidays as well? Could flexible holidays be the secret to a happier workplace?

Employees can take as many holiday days as they like, so long as they get everything they need to do completed and the standards are maintained.

The policy has been implemented in organizations around the world and the findings are astonishing. Stockton IT firm Visualsoft introduced limitless holidays and found that ‘‘morale, creativity, productivity and client satisfaction’’ all increased.

Clay Skirky, a New York University scholar argues that when a system is designed to control bad behaviour, it often creates the behaviour it is trying to avoid.

While the fear is that people will abuse the limitless holiday concept, companies have found that it helps to filter out bad employees. Netflix has the idea that, when you have committed employees, they will get the job done as efficiently as possible for the benefit of not only their team but for their careers. When they don’t you show them the door.

As a Netflix executive said, ‘‘There is also no clothing policy at Netflix, but no one comes to work naked.’’

Both Netflix and VisualSoft, can boast a year on year increase in their profits – Netflix has a market cap of over 4 billion while VirtualSoft has quadrupled their team in the last 4 years.

So, forget free staff breakfasts and company cars. Why not try limitless holidays.

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