What SimpliFlying learned from forcing staff to take regular vacation time | Hacker News Reader

What SimpliFlying learned from forcing staff to take regular vacation time

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40 pointspc8656 comments

To those coming directly to the comments, this is more than the "you must take at least 2 weeks a year" thing we've all read about before:

> I recently collaborated with Shashank Nigam, the CEO of SimpliFlying, a global aviation strategy firm of about 10 people, to ask a simple question: “What if we force people to take a scheduled week off every seven weeks?”...And it was entirely mandatory...The system is designed so that you don’t get a say in when you go. Some may say that’s a downside, but for this experiment, we believed that putting a structure in place would be a significant benefit.

So that system is inherently flawed as well. All that does is add another time management problem to the worker - they will still have to schedule time off for all of the things that don't happen in that mandatory time off, and they will still have to front-load all of their work into the days before they are out of the office, and then have even more work waiting for them when they return.

In the article, they found out that 7 weeks was too often, 12 weeks was too far apart, so they moved it to 8 weeks. Bluntly, at that point as an employee I'd be looking elsewhere as fast as I could. I'd rather just have a job that let me set my own time off and not hassle me about it - making me juggle even more nonsense like that would just be another obstacle to actually accomplishing anything at work, and make it even harder to leave work behind when away from the office.

They allude to this in the article, but part of the reason why this is regularly scheduled and mandatory is that there's no front-loading of work. You simply stop coming in and the work is spread to other folks on that team/project, because they knew you were going to be out anyway.

And of course they'll still have to schedule other time off. I don't think anything in the article says this is the only time they're out of the office.

That's a pipe dream, but employees will just do whatever they have to do to make it work despite the company adding more obstacles. Oh, Jim's not going to be here next week, so let's schedule that client meeting for the week he gets back, plus the other meetings that come up while he's out. Same old story, just now not even manageable by the employee.

6 weeks is plenty vacation time in the year. I'd go bonkers having to take more.

Could you explain why - would it make your working life harder, or do you struggle to find things to do outside work?

I took the job I have to make a dent in the universe. I like time off but that much time might be too much for me.

I know, I'm not talking about vacation, I'm talking about things like doctor's visits, weddings, etc. The things that don't fall into the buckets of "work" or "vacation" but which require you not to be in the office.

At my present place I have not had vacation of more than 1 day (so far this year, 2 of those) in 18 months. One app release after another, and for our portion we have 2 programmers covering three apps, there is no backup. Budget does not allow for more, so basically impossible. Of course the real problem is that we should not be releasing apps on such an insane schedule, we don't need it.

It's ironic that you guys create the mess you put yourself in. Let the business fail. Book your vacation. Stop risking your health. I guess it's easy to say for me, but I don't get it.. you won't make 93% of the profits of the business, you will only make $140,000.

Because he needs a job maybe

Whenever you take vacation in any small company, you (or your boss) always has to ensure that your duties are covered during the vacation.

With this system, if you needed to take vacation on a certain week, you'd just trade vacations with somebody who was scheduled for vacation that week.

A lot simpler than the traditional system.

What about needing time to cover something like your child moving to college, or a doctor visit? How is this simpler than just taking the actual days off you need instead of having to factor in an additional set of variables?

What about if your sister is getting married the week before mandatory time off, and no one is available to switch with you because they have deadlines or their sister is also getting married? I just find this adding more obstacles to getting work done and more overhead. We need solutions to employee time off, but this is naive.

Nothing in the article even implies that employees don't also have other available PTO. Nothing says directly or indirectly "we give employees a week off every seven weeks, and they don't get a single extra minute."

maybe there is an option to swap time off weeks

At many jobs, this is known as "finding oncall coverage" and it's a hassle. This system stacks another artificial constraint on top of all the existing constraints.

And what small business (in the US) can afford to give every employee 6-7 weeks (30-35 days) off every year? A market like that sounds ripe for disrupting.

They claim that the productivity increases more than made up for the increased vacation time. In other words, they claim you need fewer employees to accomplish a given amount of work rather than more.

Seems like they are trying to get rid of older more expensive employees. Older employees are more often in a relationship, likely with kids, and do not have the flexibility to plan holidays on these set times. So they'll look for work elsewhere.

My assumption is that any company that's going to go down this track is trying to make it work, trying to make it useful, and trying to improve the employee's life and hence their happiness and productivity.

Your assumption is that the company is going to take the work that would have been done in that time off and force the employee to do that work anyway, but in the smaller amount of time they have available.

People with that point of view are valuable in some contexts because they can see how things won't work, can never be made to work, and in response will demand things that they know will work. For them.

The upshot is that, like most people, not every work environment will suit you. If I ran a company like this, and if a policy like this makes you head for the door, I would offer you free use of the company's facilities to help you find a place you would be better suited and unlimited time off to search for and interview at places you feel would suit you better.

In a agile development shop, couldn't you schedule vacation as part of sprints? Once the sprint is over, you take a break... Not sure how this works in practice in a team environment, but vacation would be a project management aspect?

One thing I didn't see mentioned here: some companies, especially in finance, have mandatory vacation for another reason. Forcing people to take time off prevents them from becoming critical and make sure that the rest of the team is able to handle their absence.

There's a more cynical reason, too. If you're up to no good, the rest of your team is more likely to notice when you're on vacation, they're covering for you, and whatever you came up with to hide your malfeasance is on hold.

To amplify that point, a large amount of finance malfeasance involves doing alterations on a daily basis, and an enforced vacation foils that.

I feel fortunate that my company gives generous vacation time (up to 4 weeks), plus sick days, "personal days", and national holidays.

We have a use it or lose it policy, which encourages everyone to use it. I'm also fortunate that the work for my role specifically is pretty easily managed with a reduced team, and has natural periods of being slow.

That said, it does feel weird to take extended vacation (2 weeks plus) even though its entirely within our rights as employees. There's a feeling of FOMO and fear of being seen as a slacker for taking too much time at once.

I like the pre-set vacation times, but it does make it hard for things like coordinating small teams so theres no over-lapping vacations. It also would make it hard/near impossible to schedule events in the future - e.g. weddings - unless you had some say over when the week was taken.

I hated use it or lose it until I got to my current employer. We get 4 weeks a year, and it's mostly use or lose it (you can roll over 20 hours). Sick days don't count, excused absences (e.g. travel) don't count, and if you're working at a client site, client holidays don't count even if the main office is open that day - I'm currently at a state government client so get an extra 5 or 6 days a year.

It definitely encourages you to lose the time, but what's more is that it encourages you to plan ahead, schedule the time, and actually do something with it. Like any office, the time off needs to be approved, and nobody wants to be in the situation where it's November 28th and they've got 2 weeks of vacation left that they can't use by the end of the year.

We have a similar policy (with no rollover except in certain extenuating circumstances that I understand basically never happen). It's nice in terms of everybody actually using their vacation. But because you can't roll over we end up with people who don't take vacation all year and then disappear around the first of December.

It's always baffles me how many Americans get nervous thinking about just two weeks off. It's pretty sad that a lot of people never get a month during their whole working life.

How does anyone travel with less than two weeks time? I'm about to go travel and the two weeks I took seems too short!

15 countries in 7 days. "Beijing in 36 hours" is a common theme in newspapers.

> I feel fortunate that my company gives generous vacation time (up to 4 weeks), plus sick days, "personal days", and national holidays.

In the UK we get a minimum of 5.6 weeks leave by law. I am unfortunate in that I currently have the minimum, most of my friends have 6 or 7 weeks leave.

Your 5.6 weeks is inclusive of bank holidays though; you get less than the parent's 4 weeks.

Depends on the country. England has 8 public holidays, Scotland seems to have ~10 though.

all said and done I get around 6 - 6.5 weeks of vacation time when counting personal days, sick days, and national holidays.

I would love to have a full 7, but that's pretty unheard of in the US.

sick days in the uk are not holiday days. You get an unlimited number of sick days per year, and after three consecutive days off you need to provide a doctors note.

In fact to be honest limiting the amount of days you are allowed to be ill on seems crazy to me, not just socially but also from a business perspective. Sick days aren't just because we like employees, its because you don't want to come in to work, get little done due to being ill, and infect coworkers.

Use it or lose it just means 'lose it' to a lot of people.

This is amazing. It would not only avoid burnout but also help with repetitive stress injuries and other problems that need rest. Right now I try to schedule a long three week vacation every year but I'm burnt out for months before it and have pain almost constantly except right after vacation when it's less or even gone. I wish more employers would do this or at least offer more than two or three weeks a year. Instead, I file workers comp cases, work well below my capability because I'm not healthy, and spend an inordinate amount of time looking for and going to doctors and physical therapists. In the end, they'd get a lot more work and better work with this system or one like it but most employers don't even consider it, just like they don't consider the impact of having bad lighting in the office and a lot of other small details that can be fixed cheaply but affect people in major ways.

I also wonder how health costs would change if Americans took more vacation. Since I am in the US with only 3 weeks vacation I am constantly exhausted and the vacation time is simply not enough to recover. If people weren't as exhausted they would most likely be in much better health.

> an entirely new approach to managing vacation.

New as in "in place for 50 years in France"

Either your company closes for August and you have to take vacation, or you are forced to take 2 contiguous weeks in summer.

Then they are school vacations you obviously take as well. Planning in a company is done around them.

Then there is May, which is full of holes filled in with vacation days. And often compulsory days off between Christmas and new year.

It works great, I am relaxed coming back to the office to my 300 emails from my non French colleagues who do not expect me to answer anyway while I am away (I never read my emails while on vacation)

This is an anti-fraud measure pure and simply. Also a policy against a loss of staff business recovery type situation.

Often a person has to leave the office for a period of time for others to have the opportunity to discover the crime. The enforced absence prevents ongoing cover ups.

Also, having a person leave their position for a period of time forces cross training between staff. If a person can't be gone for a 1 week holiday, the company is going to be fucked if that person gets hit by a bus one day.

This approach has a problem. Not everything can be relegated to a fixed schedule. For example, I have a friend taking next week off to go eclipse watching. How is that accommodated with a mandatory week off every 8.

"Hey, can I swap weeks with so-and-so?" "Sure!"

Not a good response to "I have a friend taking next week off to go eclipse watching. How is that accommodated with a mandatory week off every 8."

The eclipse happens at a fixed time; if your model of vacation is that employees are supposed to swap their randomly-scheduled vacations around to get the times they want, you'll immediately notice that there's much more demand than supply for vacation during the eclipse.

The "schedule your own time" model doesn't work any better for that scenario. If 75% of the company wants to go to the eclipse, you're either going to close up shop for the week (like European companies frequently do for vacation) or tell some folks no.

American companies working on the "schedule your own time" model don't even necessarily close up shop during the week of Christmas, when well over 75% of the company takes vacation. Things are slow, but they're open.

Why is that "not any better" than the model where everyone wants to take vacation, but they're not allowed? It seems like an obvious improvement, whether you decide to close for the week or not.

It's not covered in the article, but it's such an obvious issue that I'm sure they've got a system in place.

My guess is simply that you can trade vacation weeks with others, and that they fall back to the traditional system when that doesn't work: whole company shutdown during Christmas, and submit vacation request form at other times.

I imagine the main issue Europeans will notice is that a week is pretty short. They're used to real vacations 2-4 weeks long.

It actually sounds awful.

Imagine having to miss something you were really looking forward to, then spend the following week on enforced leave. It would get old fast.

Ok, so US company re-discovered benefits of something that in Europe is mandated by law :) Once again we can see how US is a place to earn money and Europe is a place for work-life balance.

Where in Europe is it mandated by law that someone take a week off every two months?

Well, not exactly the same but here in France for example we have 5 weeks holiday per year plus n days extra to compensate for the maximum number of days I am allowed to work per year (219). n is variable because of official holidays and is 7 for me this year. The summer holidays are 2 weeks minimum..... by law.

Yes, that's exactly what I meant. In Poland it is similar: you have 26 vacation days and you have to use them all, with at least one two weeks in one go. Employer can be fined if employees don't use all of their vacation days.

Add 5-7 days of bank holidays on top of that and average Polish employee has at least two or three vacation periods per year.

My own, single data point from this year:

one week vacations in February (skiing),

5 days in April (Easter + 2 vacation days),

one week beginning of May (two bank holidays one day apart + 3 vacation days),

two weeks in August,

one week planned for Christmas (requiring only 3 vacation days).

Fairy typical schedule in my country.

A week every two months is of course kinda extreme. But for example in my country, it's required to take 2 weeks vacations in one go every year. Another 2 weeks (or 10 work days) can be taken at employee and company discretion.

I never heard about a company/employee fined for not taking (as in, employee refusing, not company denying) vacations. It's quite frequent in small companies and/or in higher ranks actually. But theoretically it's just another labour code offense.

However, most companies have an unwritten rule to use up vacation days during the year and don't accumulate them. Unused vacations pay is due on the day of resignation. Nobody wants someone to go 10 years without vacation and then pay them nearly an annual salary in one go.

What do you think of two years paid maternal leave? By law. . .

That's not really considered vacation so I'm not sure what that has to do with this proposal, honestly.

Implying everyone in Europe has a good work life balance!

Some are pushed to their limits every day for a meager wage most of us wouldn't leave the bed for.

How is that specific to Europe? Don't you have the same "some" anywhere else?

Certainly. He mentioned Europe specifically though.

Seriously. I could take years off between jobs if I wanted to because my salary in Canada is so much higher than it would be in Europe. I consider that much better than 5 weeks a year or whatever.

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