Unlimited Time Off

It's a big vacation week around the globe and a bank holiday in the UK today.? August Bank Holiday means Notting Hill Carnival where I once experimented with my Fish Eye lens.?

Notting Hill Carnival is the largest community celebration of Caribbean heritage in the world and it is designed to be A LOT of fun.

But it is always too crowded for me and I am not prepared to push my way through to get to the steel drum bands, dancers, and colorful parade.

So why did I go?

Everyone has a different definition of fun and for me being around other people who are having fun is a lot of fun.

We also have our own ideas of what vacation should look like.

For some it is action-packed; for others it is rest.

For some it is exploring the world; for others it is going back to the same place again and again.

For some it is completely disconnecting from work; for others it is boxing work into short check-ins instead of day-long meetings.

I was speaking to a senior executive who loves her job and just came back from 2 weeks of holiday and she said, "for the first time in my career I thought to myself -- I could get used to this."

Enter the discussion of unlimited Paid Time Off (PTO).

How much time would you take off if you had unlimited PTO?? Six weeks? Eight weeks? Three months? Six months?

At which point did you start to get itchy and roll your eyes at me?

How much time off is too much time off?

Most people answer this question by referencing the constraints of their role or the culture of their firm which is influenced by how people work and how leadership role models time away.

Unlimited PTO has become controversial because companies are using it as a tool to save costs by not accruing vacation expense.?

It also means that if an employee leaves, they aren't paid out for accrued but unused vacation. (Personally I think this should be a non-issue because employees should take vacation.)

Studies show employees need breaks (not just short ones like I showed in the last issue of Executive Maven) but time truly away from the office and work.

In his autobiography "Let My People Go Surfing", Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard talks about how he set up his business to take six months off to go rock climbing every year. Six months!

The title of the book is based on the culture of the company which overlooked the Pacific Ocean -- if the waves started looking good it was fine to grab your surfboard to go catch one in the middle of the day.

Yvon's formula is "hire self-motivated, very intelligent people who know their job and then you leave them alone."

An organizational psychologist once told Chouinard that his employees were so independent that they were unemployable anywhere else!

Can your workplace create a culture of prioritizing results over hours worked??

Of balancing work-life integration over trade-offs??

Of delivering service over setting faux deadlines?

Can you?

If you can create a team environment and a workplace where people support each other with time off and your company decides to implement an unlimited PTO policy, on your next vacation you may need to ask yourself, "could I get used to this?"

From the Executive Maven Toolkit

In each issue I share a simple tool from our library and today I am sharing my framework for thinking about Employee Engagement.

Compensation and recognition are the foundational elements of a transactional relationship between employers and employees -- but more money and promotions doesn't drive engagement.

There are great tools out there to more robustly measure employee engagement from companies like CultureAmp, but it starts with understanding what matters to your employees.

From Elizabeth on LinkedIn

Every issue I spotlight a post that most resonated with my network and this time it was about the phases of my family holiday photos (I suppose that makes this the vacation issue!)

You can read the full post here.?

Did you know that you drive which posts get the most visibility and that commenting more than 5 words on someone's post increases the chances their posts will be seen by others in their network?? (Hint-hint!)

Research and Expert Resources

Since it's a popular vacation week I won't share a full research report but rather a quick hit survey just released by Gallup.

Their survey of 135 leaders at Gallup’s CHRO Roundtable showed that 66% of HR leaders don't think AI will replace jobs over the next 12 months but 72% think it will in the next 3 years.

In our last issue I talked about the "future time fallacy" which is the belief that time today is more valuable than time in the future.?

It is very possible that this is an example of that fallacy. It would be challenging, maybe even scary, to imagine AI replacing people in the next year, but 3 years seems much further away.?

Or maybe these HR leaders are actively working on replacing jobs and they have detailed project plans?? I'll start asking around.

You may read the full article here.

Links and Resources

If you're looking for some additional personal development before summer is officially over please check out my free resources and links page here.