Do Unlimited Vacation Days Mean Happier Employees?

Do you like the sound of unlimited vacation days? For Social Strata, a small social media company in Seattle, Wash., this is standard company policy as of 2010. No strings attached. For the first time this year, 1% of companies are reporting a shift to an unlimited paid vacation policy while achieving high rates of productivity, retention and employee collaboration.

In an interview with NPR, cofounder Rosemary O’Neill, said, “When I said, ‘Unlimited paid leave, no strings attached,’ there was a moment of, ‘Are you punking us? Is this a joke?’ “And contrary to doubts, this change hasn’t led to mass vacationing at Social Strata. In fact, O’Neill reports that compared to last year, there was no real upswing in the number of days off requested among her staff.

Netflix has been exemplified for years for its unlimited time off policy, a strategic decision for the movie subscription service, which recently got much heat for its competitive workplace policy that rewards high achievers and fires the adequate. Its PTO policy aligns with Netflix’s unique work culture, where your commitment to high performance and over achiever status dictates your stay and progress. As VP for Corporate Communications Steve Swasey puts it, “We have engineers who work pretty much around the clock because that’s the way they work. And then they take two months to go visit family in India. We have people who never take a vacation for three years and then take a 90-day trip someplace. But they’ve earned it.”

WorldatWork, a human resources group, released a report earlier this year that certifies that this trend is on the rise. The survey that polled 1,222 people—a majority being benefits specialists—highlights that while large organizations still prefer to go with the traditional paid time off structure (separate categories for Personal, Sick and Vacation), medium-size and small businesses are shifting to either a lump sum (referred to as the bank-type system) structure or an unlimited vacation days policy (see graph to the left).

Several studies have shown that flexible work schedules keep employees happier, more productive and highly engaged. But there remains a force of thought that doubts the unlimited nature of an unlimited vacation days’ policy: I.e., is it subterfuge for higher performance and due diligence?

Having worked for a company that followed a traditional, categorized paid time off structure ensured that I took time off at the cost of shorter vacations. However, at another previous employer that followed the bank-type system, extended vacations were great but taking an unscheduled day off due to sickness, etc., always accompanied guilt and worry. Unlimited days, then, seem to perfectly bridge the two systems allowing for guilt-free sick days and restful vacations.

In the end, an informed professional’s career path depends as much on our ability to take time off as on productivity and adeptness. And employers who value personnel must ensure a 360-degree valuation of their human capital, especially in a world where thanks to social media, 24/7 connectivity demands that professional and personal become easily malleable.

See the complete results: Survey of WorldatWork Members, May 2010

Hear from Rosemary and Ted O’Neill on Social Strata’s unlimited paid vacation policy.

What’s your take on it? As an employer, would you risk possible misuse of unlimited days off in favor of increased productivity? How does your company regulate vacation days? Leave a comment, email In Good Company or connect with me on Twitter @VaultCSR.

–Posted by Aman Singh, In Good Company

Why the Office Isn’t Going Anywhere Soon

AP Photo/Keith Srakocic

Imagine you weren’t tied to your desk or your office. That you could do your job—or significant parts of it—from anywhere you chose. When you close your eyes and envision that, do you find that you’re still in an office? Or are you perhaps on the deck of a boat, or closing deals on a golf course? What would the working world look like if more of us could turn those dreams into reality?

Seth Godin wrote recently that “If we were starting this whole office thing today, it’s inconceivable we’d pay the rent/time/commuting cost to get what we get.” Offering a full rationale for the statement over the course of a blog post (exec summary: you probably don’t interact with the majority of your colleagues daily anyway. If you’ve got a laptop, you’ve got everything you need), he concluded by stating that the only thing holding us to the traditional office construct is “someplace to go. Once someone figures that part out, the office is dead.”

There’s already evidence to suggest that some people are figuring that part out. A recent Businessweek piece reports on a group of people who have managed to move at least part of their working lives to the beach.  But as the piece itself points out, such people “are still rare enough that no agency tracks the phenomenon.”

Despite that, the Businessweek article does suggest that Godin is correct in one respect: that there is a certain type of worker who is capable of getting the work done regardless of their location. With that being the case, why not let them work wherever they feel they can get it done best?

The answer to that question—and to the importance of the office as a whole—lies in the sense of community. Sure, it might be possible to communicate with whomever you need to within your company by phone and email, but doing so exclusively takes a toll on everyone involved. Consider how much worse the average call center employee is treated compared to someone in a direct customer-facing position. The reason: it’s much easier to dehumanize someone if you don’t have to deal with them face to face.

Therein lies the true importance of the office—and the real reason that it’s not going anywhere soon, no matter the advances in collaboration software and technology.
Sure, that commute might be the bane of your existence, but consider the good that can come out of bumping into a colleague in the hallway, or stopping by someone’s desk for a quick chat. Many’s the business issue that has been solved from an otherwise casual starting point. Take that away, and you lose a large part of whatever collaborative spirit exists within your workforce at present.

Throughout history, people have naturally gravitated towards the concept of community, and have tended to create living spaces at both the individual and community level that allow for congregation. The office is merely an extension of this tendency. And, with companies being nothing more than hand-picked communities, it behooves leaders to do all they can to ensure that those people feel as connected to one another as possible.

The problem with questions such as the one at the top of this blog, and opinions like Godin’s, is that they encourage people to think of themselves as autonomous units. You might be able to do the same type and quality work anywhere. You might not need your colleagues around, or be quite happy communicating by email. But they might not, and may even think that having their colleagues around them is something of a perk.

Of course, I’m not suggesting that companies shouldn’t be flexible in figuring out working arrangements—the benefits it has for employee happiness and wellbeing are well documented. But so, too, is the importance of strong communities and people feeling invested in the people they work with. (Plus: how would most of us ever meet prospective partners?) For that reason, the office isn’t going anywhere, no matter how much fantasizing we do.

Does Dissent Have Any Room In Your Team?

In today’s highly skilled work environment, dissent is a no brainer. As college graduation rates continue to climb, they are gradually also redefining work culture. Hierarchies and established ways of doing things are increasingly being tested by a new generation, adept in technology and much more in favor of a work/life balance. Call it the war between the millennials and baby boomers or just yet another realignment of the way we operate in corporate America, life in the cubicle is changing.

Learning to embrace opposition and maneuvering it toward resolution is no easy task. Even in the most modern and youth-centric offices, traditional rules and authority often end up becoming reasons for dissent and fraction. But sometimes all it takes is a different take on the process or eventual conclusion of a project.  As an executive, then, how do you handle conflicting ideas from team members?

Keeping in mind that not all offices follow a democracy, here are five ways to ensure your team remains motivated, creative and purposeful.

1) Set the tone for the team and the project: When introducing the project, make the process, the expected conclusion and everyone’s role in it clear. By detailing personal targets as well as specifying individual roles, you will make participation easy as well as achievable and accountable. Also, by spelling out the process, you’re indicating how much participation, engagement and thinking outside the box you really want. Because let’s face it: not every project needs brain surgery and new processes. But what if you’re positive that your idea will succeed and you just need your staff to fall into line? Again, offices aren’t democracies, so just make your idea clear and ensure that everyone understands what you want. You might not receive the Favorite Boss of the Year award, but at least you won’t send mixed signals to the team

2) Talk it out: Despite making goals and the processes clear, sometimes team members–many of whom have been taught that creativity, engagement and leadership give birth to the best ideas–will still go ahead and put forth a proposal that might run counter to yours and propose a different set of outcomes.

You can handle this two ways: a) Invite the employee to present her idea to the team and get collaborative feedback. Hey, after all, two (or three) heads work better than one. Or b) you have a one on one conversation with the employee and demonstrate why you think your proposal has a higher rate of success. If there remains disagreement, chart out the pros and cons, connect the differences in the two proposals and invite dialogue instead of restraining thought. While debates don’t always lead to conclusions, they ensure active engagement and tell your team that their ownership in the project is equally valuable.

3) Test it: If an active debate doesn’t sort out the picture, give her the chance to test it out. Give the employee a fixed time span, the resources and the bandwidth to test out the proposal within a limited test area. By encouraging a practical solution, you’re ensuring engagement, encouraging creative thinking, leadership and respecting their input. As I said, the aim isn’t to prove someone wrong, but to find the most efficient and successful way of completion. Together.

4) Simulate a proposal: Simulation exercises can be useful in resolving team conflicts. Especially if the project is time-sensitive and you need to test out a new theory/proposal of a team member, and don’t have the resources to ensure a proper test. Give the team member a test environment to work with internally and use the results of the simulation, whether that be a closed network meeting, a survey of the contended parties, or a role play within the office, to decide the eventual process. Again, this will keep your team motivated and involved. And nothing breeds respect for the boss and commitment to the company’s success like active engagement.

5) Make it clear: Every executive has a different modus operandi. Make it clear if your prescribed methods are the only way. The autocratic management style still exists in many executive suites and if it is the way you swear by, the least you can do to ensure follow-up and diligent conclusion is to make it clear from the start. Again, no guarantees of team loyalty laurels, but at least you ensure attracting the right kind of talent for your team. Rest assured there remain many today who will kowtow to your ideas and orders without the tiniest objection, so if obedient and hard working employees are your goal, make it clear.

Events Lineup: Vault Reports from Internet Week, New York

This week promises to be high on event coverage as well as new products (Apple announced their new iPhone) and collaborations (Vault will host featured blog posts from the 2010 Class of Climate Corps, EDF’s sustainability-focused internship program). Below is a quick lineup of all the event coverage you can look forward to.

Today: Conference Board’s webcast on the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and the Future of Integrated Reporting

The panel includes Mike Wallace, the director of the sustainability reporting framework with GRI; Intel’s Director of CSR Strategy and Communications, Suzanne Fallender; Doug Kangos, a partner with PricewaterhouseCoopers National Professional Services unit; and Rina Levy, a ESG analyst with Bloomberg. The topic: the future of integrated reporting, and how much data is too much? Coming up: Is integrated reporting, i.e., meshing the traditional annual report, which focuses on financial metrics, with the other annual report that discusses CSR initiatives, the future?

Tuesday and Wednesday: World Innovation Forum

Already underway, the forum will host top thinkers and strategists from the corporate world as well as academia. Some of them include Harvard Business School professor and head of the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness, Michael Porter; Xerox CEO Ursula Burns; Seventh Generation cofounder and CSR advocate, Jeffrey Hollender [See his exclusive interview with Vault: “Take the ‘S’ out of CSR”]; and Executive Editor of GreenBiz.com Joel Makower. Vault’s News and Commentary team will be at the Bloggers’ Hub to bring you live coverage from the forums. Also, stay tuned for their tweets @VaultCareers or follow the hastag #wif10.

Thursday: The PepsiCo and ThinkSocial #Promise Conference

Part of the lineup for Internet Week in New York, this is a unique conference that promises to pair an unpopular pair: sustainability and social media. Featuring marketing executives from PepsiCo, Timberland, GE, Nokia and MTV, and moderators from Fast Company, TED and GOOD, the full day event will cover a wide variety of topics including Pepsi’s Dream Machine, “Promise” presentations by companies like GE, Timberland and Pepsi, all of which will discuss their observations and lessons of pursuing socially responsible commitments using social media.

To round off the mash of corporate perspective, media outlets, individuals who cover CSR, social media and public interest organizations will weigh in. Vault’s CSR Editor Aman Singh will be at the conference to bring you live coverage In Good Company, as well as on Twitter @VaultCSR.

Friday: Hot and Bothered Breakfast: Why It’s Time to Change The Gender Ratio in New Media & Tech

To regular readers of this space, this will sound familiar. In Good Company recently discussed a NPR report that blamed the lack of women experts on their lack of aggressiveness and narcissistic personality. This panel will discuss “why women are present and accounted for across the new media and tech space— just not at the top, or on panels, or at conferences, or in magazine articles…or, crucially, in VC money.” Culminating Internet Week in New York City, the panel promises to be controversial, if not revelatory. We will be at the panel to bring you live coverage In Good Company, besides tweeting @VaultCSR.

Tweeting Your Job Out the Window

Remember the sheaf of papers you signed off on when you started work? Somewhere in there was your company’s official Ethics Policy. Yeah, feel the yawn coming? And that’s why nine out of 10 new hires simply sign off on that paper without given it more than a cursory glance. But today this policy may be under attack.

At an event hosted by The Conference Board last week on Business Ethics & Compliance, I heard ethics and compliance officers from different industries discuss their industry-respective takes on regulatory reform and challenges of instilling ethical behavior in the workplace. And somewhere in the middle there was suddenly a confession from one of the panelists. One that surprised me not only because of their acknowledged bafflement with it but also what followed as an honest confession of not knowing how to deal with it. They were referring to the new phenomenon called social media.

With Facebook and Twitter blurring the line between personal and private, companies have to deal with a new challenge for their ethics policies, including confidentiality, privacy policies, and reduced productivity. How much company information is it okay for someone to post on their Facebook status, if at all? Is discussing their daily work on a public forum considered a breach of confidentiality? And what if this includes a client name or a product in the making? Lawsuit written all over it?

But the No. 1 concern, according to the panel—which comprised of ethics officers from PricewaterhouseCoopers, Lincoln Financial and PepsiCo—was where to draw the line between personal and professional. One of the key speakers was Jude Curtis, the chief ethics and compliance officer at PricewaterhouseCoopers, who discussed his team’s efforts in putting together an official “Social Media Policy.”  Curtis also added that PwC considered their employees’ presence on social networking sites serious enough to set up a Social Media Steering Group, which is tasked with continually reviewing their policy as the field evolves.

Pepsi’s VP of Compliance, Stephen Noughton added yet another dimension to the discussion by expressing his concern: Does a potential candidate’s presence on social media deserve a place in the traditional background check? While the jury is out on this one, as a jobseeker, does that worry us? With industry experts citing social media key for your career success, I’m willing to bet yes on that one.

Finally, the last segment to this conversation:  We are all asked to sign a “Code of Conduct” at work, however, what happens when we flip this? What about the board signing an ethics policy that asks them to adhere to the triple bottom line principal when making any strategic decisions? Sound untraditional? Well, it is, but it might not be for too long as corporate social responsibility gets concretely defined across board rooms and shifts from pure advocacy quests to instrumentally changing strategic direction at corporations.

Ethics will soon have to bridge the gap from being solely an individual responsibility to a conscious common denominator in our business decisions as well. If you understand business terminology better, it’s also called sustainable capitalism.

—Posted by Aman Singh Das, In Good Company

Millennials: Lazy Workers or Champions of Work/Life Balance?

Millennials. The very word sparks debates galore. And depending on who is speaking, these discussions can be depressing, full of expletives, ambiguous or downright dismissive. A recent survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, found out that the “new” No. 1 quality that millennials believe makes us unique is technology. It displaces the spot taken by work ethics for decades, and herein is the debate.

For a lot of us who work with millennials, however, this shouldn’t come as a surprise. Technology has invaded our professional and personal lives, especially for millennials, who have grown up expecting the ease and immediacy that technology affords us.  But that it would replace “work ethics” in what makes them unique has people in a tizzy. The Washington Post tackled the question in its blog Story Lab asking, “Are Millennials Lazy?” It stated that this survey would make millennials the first generation to not cite work ethics as their No. 1 unique distinguisher.

The Post also compared the top 5 spots picked by millennials and Generation X workers. For millennials, technology was followed by music and pop culture they grew up on, their liberal politics and “tolerance” of others, their generation being smarter, with fashion rounding out the top 5. For Generation X-ers, the list was a tad different. While no. 1 remained technology, close on its heels was “work ethic” followed by conservative or traditional values, their superior intellect, and finally being respectful.

How much should this worry us as employers, mentors and executives building motivated and loyal teams? Clearly, there is a distinct difference in the way the different generations work. Thousands of books have been written on the subject, seminars are regularly hosted for HR executives, and it is always a testy discussion for numerous exec meetings. Some younger companies might have mastered this balance but for most firms, this disconnect remains an unsolved dilemma.

Vault.com’s Phil Stott took up the debate earlier this month, wondering whether millennials were plain deluded, betrayed by society or just too young to know better! Citing a poll that surveyed high school seniors since the recession continue to want more vacation and time for themselves away from the job, he said, “Despite the economic meltdown then in full flow—events that were reshaping their likely career paths before their eyes—that group of students still expected to graduate into a world where they’d be able to dictate terms to an employer based on how much they’d like to work.”

Realistically, besides the emphasis on technology, can millennials genuinely be blamed for devoting less effort and energy to their work in an economy where it’s been made clear that no one is indispensable? And if they are, are we reciprocating by providing them with training, encouraging new thought, changing our internal work policies to accommodate them, or showing them the door? Post a recession that left everyone scrambling to hold on to their jobs, will we be better served to cater to their prioritizations and figure out a formula that allows a juggle of old and new?

As managers, directors and recruiters, you make these choices every day. Do you continue to give demonstration of strong work ethics precedence in the job interview or have yesteryear taboos like asking whether work/life balance would be a problem or whether Facebook and Twitter were restricted at work, replaced top priorities? Leave us a comment here or follow us on Twitter @VaultCSR and add your view to the debate.

March Madness: Harmless Distraction or Career Threat?

AP Photo/Jeff Roberson

Is there a worker in the country who doesn’t know that March Madness officially got under way today? Even if you care nothing about basketball of any kind, chances are if you work in an office someone has been round pushing a blank bracket under your nose in the last couple of weeks. And, even if you chose not to fill that bracket out—which puts you in a category that doesn’t include President Obama—the chances are many of your colleagues did, which means you’ll be hearing all about it until the tournament is over.

Opinion on whether bracket participation is a good thing or not is widely varied. While the majority of people clearly believe it to be harmless fun—with some even suggesting that it has a positive effect on company morale–there are other opinions out there. Several business papers—most notably the Wall Street Journal—have picked up a survey by Challenger, Gray & Christmas that estimates “worker distraction and lost time will cost U.S. employers $1.8 billion during the first week of the tournament alone.” Of course, the Journal also notes that the folks at Challenger offer the disclaimer that their “estimate is probably about as accurate as the points spreads computed by Las Vegas bookmakers.” (While that’s supposed to add a tongue-in-cheek element, I can’t remember the last time I encountered a cash-strapped bookmaker, so clearly their points spreads can’t be all bad!)

Lost productivity is likely one of the main reasons behind the fact that around one-third of US companies have policies in place that restrict office pools and workplace gambling, according to the SHRM. And little wonder: look around many workplaces today and you’re bound to discover many cases of covert (and sometimes blatantly open) ball-watching, and many more instances of colleagues huddled around screens checking the scores from the opening games against their brackets.

While that kind of behavior may seem like harmless fun, be aware that your boss might not share your outlook: the Journal piece raises the specter that “a few employers could fire people for unauthorized Internet use, for watching the games.” Imagine trying to explain that one away at your next interview.

What’s your perspective on brackets at work? Are they a harmless distraction or something worse? Do they help morale or infuriate you when you see your colleagues using work time to keep up with sports stories. Have you ever known anyone to get into trouble for their sport-viewing habits at work? I’m keen to know the answers to all of these questions and more. Chime in via the comments section. Take our homepage poll (it’s on the bottom right), or join our Facebook discussion.