Take all the vacation days you need — if you work at LinkedIn.
The professional networking site is the latest big name firm to offer its employees unlimited days off.
“There is no set minimum or maximum amount of vacation time employees can take in a year,” LinkedIn Vice President Pat Wadors wrote on the company’s blog. “Instead, employees will work with their manager to request time off when they need it.”
The so-called “discretionary time off” policy starts next month and is intended to help workers stay focused and prevent burnout.
It’s “part of a growing movement to place more focus on results and empowerment, not hours worked,” Wadors added, referencing other companies such as Netflix, Virgin and Groupon that have unlimited vacation policies.
Wadors trusts her staffers won’t take advantage of the new policy by using it as a year-long paid vacation.
“Taking every day off would be unreasonable,” Wadors told the Daily News.
“Knowing our culture, that wouldn’t happen,” she added.
Americans being what they are, the limitless leisure time policy won’t likely make much of a difference for many employees. Statistics show that American workers only take 51% of their eligible time off.
And a “60 Minutes”/Vanity Fair survey in July revealed that most Americans would rather have a $20,000 raise than four more weeks of vacation.
Only 32% wanted more time off.
Startups like the online shopping site Gilt and Chegg, an online textbook rental site, began moving away from the traditional time off accrual policy about four years ago. Today, only 2% of employers offer unlimited paid time off, according to a recent survey by the Society for Human Resource Management.
Bigger companies like General Electric — which employees around 307,000 people worldwide — are following suit. It began offering unlimited vacation earlier this year.
“This may become a trend if you have the right work force,” says Steven Kane, a human resources consultant.
“If you’re the coworker of someone who is taking off an indefinite amount of time, you might not be very pleased,” he added.
Freeloading may have been a concern for employees at Tribune Publishing who were displeased when the company announced its “discretionary time off policy” last November. It was reversed just a week later.
