Responsible Vacation Policy
blog.factual.com
blog.factual.com
If you can solve the problem of finding a management chain that truly looks out for its employees rather than chasing maximal profitability and/or covering its own a$$, I salute you. Until then, I'll stick to a formal vacation policy as the 80% solution that just isn't broken.
The law entitles You to a minimum of 28 days of paid leave per year. This consists of 8 public holidays and 20 days of paid leave per year. We expect you to take at least the minimum amount of leave each year. We also encourage you to take as much additional leave as you need to maintain the health and well being of yourself and the company, as long as to do so would not cause harm to You, Us or any client We are engaged with.
Basically, we expect our employees to take a minimum amount of time off but we don't track it. Hopefully the other paragraphs make sense to responsible adults too
Oh, and about every person who moved to the US (i.e. the valley) said they miss their vacation time a lot. And they also said they love their jobs...
> Imagine an employee who takes this policy and chooses to live like a European with umpteen weeks off every year. What to do about that? Simply tie it back to performance and things become clear.
It's probably just my bad English that I don't get the nuance, but it sounds a little condescending.
Are the Europeans actually taking more time off due to being used to it? Is their performance judged more because of this, if they do? I can't really imagine anyone answering YES to that, but it just struck me as odd to include this.
That said, your model sounds very good (compared to what seems to be the American standard) :)
This section of the article was meant to speak directly to management who may be concerned about using this policy due to this particular possibility. The following text is attempting to answer their concerns. That is, don't worry so much about this. Rather, judge the results, as you should be anyway.