Unlimited Vacation: How to redeem its tainted reputation

With the northern hemisphere in the middle of summer bliss and social media feeds slowly taken over by beach and cocktail selfies, the “work” world is highly likely filled with vacation handovers and out-of-office replies.?

Vacation: we all need it, and at most companies, it’s quite a “strategy process”? trying to get the most out of public holidays without losing on those precious vacation days numbers.

This is why, in recent years, the trend of “unlimited vacation” has become a popular buzzword. But with the rise of its popularity, voices became louder that unlimited vacation is getting a bad rap for being a scam. A study by Namely shows that employees with unlimited vacation take fewer days off than people with limited vacation. Additionally, it is seen negatively, since in the case of exits, employees are not paid for any unused vacation and thus the company makes financial savings.?

In 2021, we decided at simpleclub to roll out unlimited vacation. However, we conducted a lot of research to ensure that employees really see this as a benefit while not jeopardizing our company goals.?

How did we go about it?

First and foremost, when it comes to taking unlimited vacation this is our main non-negotiable expectation: “You can flexibly allocate your own time & work as long as it does not hurt your team and committed deliverables”.

Additionally:

1. We work with company -? and department-wide quarterly OKRs. Every individual knows exactly what they should achieve in the quarter and how their contributions affect the team's results. With that in mind, people can plan their vacations accordingly and, how to hand over tasks, that can be covered during their leave.?

1. We have set a legal minimum number of days people must take. We used the German labour law as guidance and in Germany, the legal minimum is 24 vacation days for a 6-day working week. Although we have a 5-day working week, we set the 24 as a minimum which is also set in the employment contract. Those 24 days can be tracked and unlimited vacation is unlocked, once those 24 days are taken.

1. The people team and managers continuously review the number of vacation days taken and send reminders company-wide and to leads. Yes, we sometimes even message individuals ?? to remind them to take their vacation. Our current company size allows for that now but it is certainly not a sustainable approach. That’s why every manager has a transparent overview of the team’s vacation days, additionally, through frequent reporting of all types of leaves.

1. Every change you want to make starts at the top, with the values and behaviors that the leadership team lives by. As a leadership team, we continuously take vacations and share that openly with our teams.?

What did all of that result in?

On average, our people took 31 vacation days last year and we had unprecedented growth of our targets.?

When we presented internally a retrospective on how unlimited vacation is working for the people at simpleclub, we received very positive feedback. So, it’s safe to say that for now, unlimited vacation seems to be working quite well for simpleclub and its people.?