Page 16 - Harvard Business Review (November-December, 2017)

was wavering about coming back. Each woman wor-
ried that it would be too difficult to balance a full-time
office job with parenting. I didn’t want to lose them.
“What can we do to make this manageable?” I asked.
One wanted to work three-day weeks. Done. Several
wanted to work from home when necessary. No prob-
lem. This flexibility is common now, but it wasn’t
back then, when e-mail didn’t exist and companies
still used fax machines. But I trusted those employees
to get their jobs done, and they did. Experiences like
that made my trust in our people grow.

FAMILY FIRST
As a CEO, I’ve also been extremely outspoken about
prioritizing family over business. I talk about it so of-
ten that I worry employees are tired of hearing it, but
it’s really important to me. I constantly tell our people
that if their job or career is the most important thing in
their life—the activity they care most about and invest
the most in—they’re making a profound and tragic
mistake. Family and relationships should be the clear
priority. I try to behave in ways that model that be-
havior. When my children were on high school sports
teams, I tried never to miss a game, even if it meant
leaving work at 2 pm on Wednesdays. And I didn’t
sneak out of the office—I told people exactly what I
was doing and encouraged them to do the same thing.
I’m a big believer in what the management writer Jim
Collins says: If you get the right people on the bus,
people who have the talent and the work ethic needed
to perform, you don’t have to spend time closely su-
pervising them. They’ll get the job done, no matter Q&A
what hours they keep.
After our HR team proposed an unlimited-vacation
policy, I started doing some research—basically just
going online and reading about other companies’ ex- UNEXPECTED CHALLENGES
periences. I quickly discovered cases in which the new
policy didn’t work well or companies had tried it and
then reverted to a traditional approach. Reading that Rich Fuerstenberg is a senior began adopting them. That’s
didn’t concern me much. Just because it hadn’t worked partner in Mercer’s health when this changed from a blip
for them didn’t mean it wouldn’t work for Kronos. consulting business and specializes to a trend.
I also read specific complaints from employees in absence management. HBR
whose companies had shifted to an open vacation spoke with him about why some What typically sparks a
policy. Most of the complaints were driven by peo- companies shift to an unlimited company to explore moving to
ple’s realization that companies adopt this policy not vacation policy—and how far an unlimited vacation policy?
out of the goodness of their hearts but to save money: this trend might grow. Edited It’s driven by several things. One
When employers offer traditional “accrual” vacation excerpts follow. of them is technology. With more
policies, people who resign or retire with unused of the workforce becoming 24/7,
time off have to be paid for those accrued days. For When did corporate interest in using flexible work schedules
open vacation policies accelerate?
large companies, that can be a substantial expense;
and working from anywhere,
HARRY ZERNIKE even at a company our size, it added up to $2 million I’d heard about random companies how can we distinguish between
when people are working and
or $3 million a year. When a company adopts an open
having them, but around 2013
policy, no more accrued days are banked, so whatever
many Silicon Valley companies
when they’re not? Companies
NOVEMBER–DECEMBER 2017 HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW 39