Page 18 - Harvard Business Review (November-December, 2017)

The second unhappy group was made up of peo- HOW UNLIMITED TIME OFF HAS AFFECTED VACATIONS
ple who’d been treating their accrued vacation like a
bank. They thought of it as dollars rather than hours, Kronos’s new policy took effect in 2016.
and they expected to get a cash reimbursement for The figures below are for U.S. employees.
unused time when they left the company. I recall one
of these employees in particular: He was in his six- AVERAGE NUMBER OF AVERAGE GROWTH IN VACATION WEEKS TAKEN,
ties and planned to retire in a year or two. He didn’t VACATION DAYS TAKEN BY PERFORMANCE GROUP
care about maternity leave, student loan assistance, Because vacation is worked out in one-
or the other new benefits, because they didn’t apply on-one conversations with supervisors,
to him. His vacation time was equal to a couple of high-performing employees feel entitled
months’ salary, and he’d been counting on receiving 16.6 to take more time off.
it when he left. HIGH GROUP 5.7 7.3
The third category of complaints came from peo- 14.0
ple who thought the new policy was unfair because it 2015 2016
gave every employee something that had previously MIDDLE GROUP 2.9 3.7
been reserved for long-tenured employees. The typ-
ical lament went like this: “I’ve stayed here 15 years
in order to get this much vacation time, and it’s not LOW GROUP 2.4 2.9
fair that new employees get as much time as I do from 2015 2016
their first day.”
To address managers’ concerns, we provided
training and individual coaching along with assur- retirement bonus,” I said. When talking with em-
ances that HR would offer support as needed. We ployees concerned about “fairness,” I gently pushed
also emphasized that we wanted people to take more back on their logic. “We’re not taking anything away
time, not less, under the new policy, so managers from you—in fact, we’re giving you the potential for
were encouraged to approve most requests. We ad- more time off,” I said. “And how much vacation time
dressed the other complaints in informal conversa- another employee gets has no impact on you.” A few
tions. I probably had a dozen of those; I’m sure our people were so upset that they talked about quitting,
HR people had many more. but in the end I don’t think anyone really left Kronos
over the policy change.
We couldn’t roll out the new policy everywhere.
A FEW MANAGERS Certain countries have very strict rules about how
companies need to account for vacation time and
THOUGHT THAT THE what workers are entitled to, which makes it nec-
essary to stick with a traditional accrual system. So
initially we’ve implemented myTime in the United
LACK OF A FORMAL States and Canada.

POLICY WOULD MAKE ENCOURAGING ANECDOTES
When we launched the new policy, we began watch-
ing the numbers to see whether people took more
THEIR JOBS HARDER. time off. Vacation time did inch higher. The tracking
allowed for transparency and communication around
the issue. If an HR person or a second-line manager
noticed that an employee hadn’t taken any days off
in the first quarter, the likely result was a conversa-
I learned a long time ago that people are entitled tion beginning with “Why aren’t you taking more
to their feelings. It’s never my job to tell them how time?” And in cases where managers weren’t approv-
they should or shouldn’t feel. When talking with ing requests, HR could intervene. I’d estimate that
people who’d been hoarding vacation time to get a 10% of managers fell into this camp. Generally they
cash windfall, I sympathized, but I pointed out that ran customer- facing teams in which absences cause
this wasn’t its intended purpose. “You’re supposed scheduling complications or worked in functions in
to use this time, not save it up for conversion into a which, they believed, people’s taking more time off

NOVEMBER–DECEMBER 2017 HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW 41