Acting Like an Owner When it Comes to Taking Time Off
Pat Wadors
Chief Human Resources Officer - Author - Board Member - LinkedIn Instructor- Dyslexic Thinker
We take great pride in LinkedIn’s culture, it’s the collective personality of our organization, and our values. Our six values and culture tenants are the principles that guide the day-to-day decisions of all of our talented employees. One of these values is “Act Like An Owner,” which for our employees is a rallying cry to always step up and be empowered.
To give our employees more flexibility and a sense of empowerment, we have just announced a big shift in the vacation benefits we offer in the United States. Instead of the traditional vacation model of offering a fixed number of hours or days off per year, we are implementing a new approach called Discretionary Time Off (DTO) starting November 1. With discretionary time off, there is no set minimum or maximum amount of vacation time employees can take in a year. Instead, employees will work with their manager to request time off when they need it.
This is a new model, but at LinkedIn we like to try new things and take intelligent risks (another one of our values!). We believe DTO, along with our new July Fourth holiday break, will give our employees the ability to better meet their personal needs, which will then allow them to bring their best self to work.
We are not alone in making this shift to DTO. It’s part of a growing movement to place more focus on results and empowerment, not hours worked. And it's an important step to help employees recharge and keep engaged.
President and Founder, The Dinerstein Group
9 年Pat, I look forward to any follow ups you may post; this is a big debate in the US and it will be great to measure it's effectiveness for both companies and employees alike. As a recruiter it will be very interesting to see if this is an incentive in talent attraction and retention. Thanks for leading the way.
Constant learner | Spreading kindness & compassion | Mum of 3 | Ex-Meta, Ex-LinkedIn
9 年Great post, Pat. I am excited to see how this plays out in the US and the true sense of empowerment and trust in its employees that a policy like this instills in the team. Sincerely hoping it is a success and we see this rolled out globally.
Technical Director at Bald Eagle Air Kinetics, SDVOSB
9 年Liz Ryan had a column on this recently, and she pretty much agreed with Nathan Hyatt's comment above.
How do you manage this with non-exempt positions where appropriate staffing levels are a concern (e.g. customer service)?
One of Prior Owner, CIU
9 年I think this is wonderful; sell us business owners a template at a fee of course.