A UK-based recruitment firm is scrapping its unlimited leave policy for employees in favor of a fixed holiday limit of 32 days, a policy the company’s founder says. would provide ‘more clarity’ on holiday standards.
“No one takes more than 21 days of the year,” Ollie Scott, founder of Unknown, said in a LinkedIn post Monday.
“It’s happened consistently with our top performers, so it sets a strange kind of ‘sin standard’… Just a general worry is ‘yes but like. , how much can I really get?” Scott wrote.
Dozens of studies and surveys confirm that employees often get fewer days off if their company has an unlimited leave policy, especially if there is a limited framework for the number of vacations they can or should take. Vacation.
In a 2017 study, the HR platform found that employees with unlimited leave plans on average get just 13 days off per year, while employees with traditional plans get 15 days off annually. .
“Depending on how an unlimited PTO policy is put into practice, it often benefits employers more than employees,” the study’s authors wrote.
Other studies show there is also an element of guilt associated with PTO use, for both limited and unlimited vacation plans.
According to a 2019 TurnKey poll of 2,000 respondents, 54% of employees surveyed felt guilty while on vacation and 70% logged into work while they were off work.
On top of that, a record 768 million days went unused by American workers in 2018 for those on restrictive vacation policies, a study by the American Travel Association found the main reason was ‘difficulty’. difficult when going to work’.
Unlimited vacations are still a popular perk of major companies globally, with Netflix, LinkedIn, GitHub and, most recently, Goldman Sachs.
The number of job ads offering unlimited days off as a bonus grew by nearly 180% from May 2015 to May 2019, according to Indeed, with potentially perks of tech jobs in their posts about six or eight times higher.
Some Canadian companies have followed suit, but the four-day workweek is also gaining traction – the Ontario town of Springwater is currently participating in a 4-day workweek pilot project and several companies are headquartered in Toronto such as The Leadership Agency and Alida Inc. has established a 4 business day policy.
Jamie Savage, CEO and founder of The Leadership Agency, told CTV News last year: “The truth is it has an immediate impact on our business.
Changes to the way workplaces operate in the country could have a positive effect on how North Americans are perceived and treated in the workplace, the Harvard Business Review suggests.
According to a 2005 Statistics Canada survey, nearly a third of working Canadians identified themselves as workaholics, and in 2015, nearly half of Canadians surveyed by the Angus Institute Reid said overtime is an option.
Legal Canadian workers are entitled to a minimum of 10 days of paid leave (PTO) annually. This law generally excludes freelance, contract, temporary, and gig workers from being eligible for PTO, and as the cost of living increases, unpaid time off is not possible.
According to the Canadian government, federally managed employees are entitled to nine statutory paid holidays.
In the UK, where Scott’s company is based, employees get 28 days of paid leave. According to the UK government, this applies to almost all full-time workers including corporate employees, irregular hours and contract workers.
