Should your employer offer unlimited holidays?

Author: Josh Powell

Should your employer offer unlimited holidays?

If it works for Netflix and Virgin, it will work for you, right? Let’s find out more about unlimited holidays.

At Joshua Robert Recruitment, we offer our team unlimited holidays. It’s something we always wanted to do, having read about how it changed the face of companies like Virgin and Groupon. It’s brought us a lot of benefits, some of which we didn’t realise at the start. In this article, I’ll tell you more about it. Maybe it’s the sort of thing you should talk to your employer about too.

How does it work?

So, we call it ‘unlimited holidays’ but really, it means that we don’t stipulate the amount of holidays our employees can take (Providing it’s above the 20 minimum requirement).

Everything else about our holiday policy is the same. You still have to book it in advance. I mean, you can’t just jet off to Vegas for two weeks without telling your manager! It doesn’t mean you can never come to work; it just means we don’t cap the number of days you book off.

We also have to make sure that everyone in the company doesn’t go on holiday all at once, just as a manager would in any other company.

The benefits of unlimited holidays

We’ve seen so many benefits since introducing unlimited holidays.

Firstly, the team are happier. They don’t have to worry about getting to the end of their holiday allocation, like other employees do. They don’t have to limit what they can do in their leisure time due to a number their employer made up one day. 

Well-rested, happy employees are more productive. We find that our team are more fired up to perform when they are in the office. We put this down to having a great work-life balance.

This policy has been a significant factor in attracting talent to the company. When exceptional recruiters hear that we offer unlimited holidays, this can be a great differentiation factor as to why they would chose us over our competition. Plus, we’re much more likely to retain them if we give them such a high level of autonomy.

Our team members love the policy and regard it as a perk. They love that we trust our people to deliver on the goals that we set without having to look over their shoulders. We empower our employees to run their own businesses within our business. 

This policy is one of the many things we do that make our staff look favourably towards us. They like it, and so do we.

Things to watch

Of course, not all policies are perfect. There are a few things you have to keep an eye on if you are going to implement unlimited holidays at your workplace:

  • Make sure your staff take enough holidays – believe it or not, we’ve seen that our people take fewer holidays now we’re not counting! This wasn’t really part of the plan, so we do visibly encourage our team members to take time off.
  • What if they take too many holidays? – There could be people on your team that abuse your generosity. Agree targets and expectations with them from the outset. If they’re not contributing , they shouldn’t be part of your company, holiday doesn’t affect this.
  • Think about how you respond when someone takes a holiday – even though you’re not tracking the number of days anymore, this policy can lead to a negative view of people who take regular days off, from management and fellow team members. 

Really, it all comes down to expectations. If you are clear about what people have to achieve in order to be a success in your company, then trust them to do it, an unlimited holidays policy should not be a problem.

Talk to your employer

All in all, we definitely recommend unlimited holidays as a staff perk. If you think it would work at your company, talk to your manager. If you’re the manager, what’s stopping you?

If you’re looking for a new challenge in recruitment, with unlimited holidays, talk to the Joshua Robert team on 0121 582 0877, or visit our site today.