Page 15 - Harvard Business Review (November-December, 2017)

IDEA WATCH HOW I DID IT

hen I joined Kronos as one of its when so many employees are plugged in around the
first employees, straight out of clock, official policies that depend on clearly delineat-
college in 1979, the company gave ing when they’re “at work” or “on vacation” strike me
new employees two weeks of paid as antiquated or even foolish.
vacation. Every year you stayed at
the company, you earned an ad-
ditional day, up to a certain level. HURDLES TO HIRING
That was how most companies This sensibility provided important context when
W handled vacation time, and al- our chief people officer asked to meet with me in late
though the numbers may vary, it’s the way most of 2014. For months we’d been experiencing recruiting
them still do. By 1984 I’d been promoted to national challenges. Kronos has 5,000 employees around the
sales manager, and four years later I became the vice world, with almost 1,500 of them at our headquarters
president of global sales and service, an executive po- in Massachusetts, where the job market for college-
sition. Kronos, which creates workplace management educated professionals tends to be very tight. At that
software and services, had a long-standing policy that point we had more than 300 open positions and were
top executives needn’t track their vacation time and having trouble filling them; if that continued, it would
could take as many days as they deemed appropriate. affect our growth plans. We talked about specific hur-
That made sense. Even back then, people in senior dles to hiring, and one of the issues was our vacation
roles were required to perform 24/7. When you’re con- policy. By then we were offering new employees three
stantly working nights, weekends, and during family weeks of paid vacation, which is comparable to what
travel, tracking your hours or declaring an official local companies with which we compete for talent
were offering. But when our recruiters tried to hire
people in their thirties or forties with significant ten-
ure at other companies, they often learned that those
A CHANGE LIKE people had four or five weeks’ vacation. Vacations are
important, and persuading people to take a job with
THIS REQUIRES less time off was a real challenge.
I asked our HR department to come up with strat-
egies that would make us more competitive in re-
FUNDAMENTAL TRUST cruiting. It created a menu of options. One was shift-
ing to an “open” vacation policy, the kind pioneered
by Netflix. Under an open system there is no set
IN THE PEOPLE WHO limit on how many days off an employee may take;
instead, individuals work things out in consultation
with their supervisors.
We decided to launch this system, which we call
WORK FOR YOU. myTime, at the beginning of 2016. Although most
employees were happy about the change, a vocal
minority were really unhappy. To be honest, I wasn’t
prepared for how much emotion and pushback this
“vacation day” becomes almost meaningless. I’ve change would evoke, even from a small number of
been in executive roles at Kronos ever since then, and people. But we’ve since worked through those chal-
CEO for the past 12 years. So I haven’t been required to lenges, and we have data that proves the new policy
track my vacation time for almost 30 years. has been good for Kronos. Unlimited vacations won’t
What’s changed since I joined Kronos is that, partly work for every company—but employers that are
owing to technology, professionals at every level of considering them can learn from our experience.
companies are now routinely on their phones, answer- You can’t even think about making a change like
ing e-mail, or doing some sort of work after business this unless you have fundamental trust in the people
hours. I see this firsthand with my daughter, who is who work for you. I’ve always tended to have such
early in her own career. Her recent positions have pro- trust, partly because every time I’ve extended it, peo-
vided only two weeks of vacation, limiting her ability ple have shown my judgment to be correct. More than
to travel with my wife and me. When she comes home 25 years ago several superstar employees on my team
for Thanksgiving, it’s not unusual to see her working went out on maternity leave at about the same time.
several hours a day over the long weekend. In an era In each case, when her leave ended, the employee

38 HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW NOVEMBER–DECEMBER 2017