Unlimited Vacation Time: The Ultimate Work Benefit?
By Lisa Scherzer | The Exchange
2012/7/25
In April Donny Salazar, vice president of customer experience at Gilt Groupe in New York, took three weeks off to travel through Southeast Asia. He got massages every day on the beach at Ko Phi Phi in southern Thailand, went on a cruise through Halong Bay in Vietnam, and saw the bustle of Ho Chi Minh City.
The trip was a combined two-week sabbatical — which every salaried Gilt employee is entitled to after three years of continuous service — and an unlimited vacation time policy. "I really took advantage of recharging," says Salazar, 32, who timed the trip to coincide with a promotion and transition to a different department within the company.
Unlimited vacation days. It sounds like the holy grail of perks, the work equivalent of a $7.95 all-you-can-eat buffet: Take as many days off as you want, whenever you want to take them, as long as you get your work done.
A number of companies, particularly the Silicon Valley, start-up kind, are moving away from the traditional vacation accrual policy and toward a looser, more employee-friendly unlimited paid time off policy. These somewhat new policies give workers greater flexibility and free managers from the administrative drudgery of having to track employees' time off. More important, an unlimited vacation policy gives these companies a recruiting edge in the war for talent.
A Perk Worth Offering
