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February 1, 2010

It’s True! Unlimited Paid Leave for Employees! Will It Work??

ME Liz Strauss wrote this at 9:19 am

Change the Question

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In an article in Business Week this weekend, Roger L. Martin and Jennifer Riel explored how approaching new ideas with an eye toward precedent and previous proof could be a killer. They told the story of a bank so risk averse it missed a huge opportunity and then held up the “abductive thinking” of Research In Motion who moved from a pager company to a smartphone contender.

In the mid-1990s, RIM was a modestly successful pager company. But Lazaridis saw potential in the idea of a portable e-mail device. He began to consider what it might look like, what it could do. He imagined something much smaller than a laptop but easier to type on than a phone. Laptops were already shrinking and bumping up against limitations on how small a QWERTY keyboard could reasonably get. Lazaridis stepped back to consider how a much tinier keyboard could be feasible—and he achieved a leap of logic: What if we typed using only our thumbs? He soon had a prototype and concrete feedback from it.

Asking what could be true—and jumping into the unknown—is critical to innovation. Nurturing the ideas that result, rather than killing them, can be the tricky part. But once a company clears this hurdle, it can leverage its efforts to produce the proof that leaders depend on to make commitments—and turn the future into fact.

Social Strata also saw potential and achieved a leap to a what if? of another fashion.

Unlimited Paid Leave for Employees?

Social media brings passionate people together in business relationships. And we look to them to show us how business might be if we work with trust and transparency. At Social Strata in Seattle, President Rose O’Neill, takes that idea seriously. Social Strata has recently surprised employees by announcing a revolutionary plan to offer its employees unlimited paid vacation benefits. At first the employees thought it was a joke.

There’s no maximum, but there is a minimum of two weeks.

From the Social Strata Founders blog post. Unlimited Paid Leave? Oh yes. :

… we decided that, if we have the “right people on the bus,” i.e., people who are passionate about what they’re doing, we don’t need to set artificial limits on the amount of time they can take off, or why they can take time off. Disciplined people will ensure that their responsibilities are handled, and still be able to recharge their batteries with time off. Undisciplined people who take advantage of the system will reveal themselves and be naturally sorted out.

Bruce Watson of Daily Finance points out that the plan relies on

With those in place, Watson says could make for an energized workforce that feels appreciated and is inspired to loyalty and higher productivity. He also points out that in a workforce larger than Social Stratas 14-person, close-knit team, it might be hard to accomplish.

Here’s an interview Ms. O’Neill had with King5 News Seattle,

The environments we build often shape our behavior. Will this radical move bring the response that Social Strata is after?

What do you think needs to be there for this benefit to work? Do you think the plan is destined to falter at some future point?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
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Filed under Comments, Community, Great Finds, Marketing, Successful Blog, Trends | 4 Comments »




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4 Comments to “It’s True! Unlimited Paid Leave for Employees! Will It Work??”

  1. February 1st, 2010 at 9:47 am
    Pat Steer (Gaelen) said

    In the spirit of changing the question, I think it should be ‘can this idea bring the change Social Strata is after?’ That answer is definitely ‘yes.’
    Will adopting unlimited paid leave bring the work environment Social Strata wants to see? That’s less certain…although with a 14-person shop, their destiny is absolutely in their own hands. The only things standing in their way are themselves.

    I actually work for one of those thousands-of-employees big corporations, and company-wide, I don’t think unlimited paid leave would work. But within my own group of ~150 people, it does and has worked more or less fine for most of the last 24 years.

    Given the chance, and the right reinforcement, people really DO develop a sense of workplace responsibility that is a marvel to see. I’ve watched it in action dozens of times – from the simple cover for someone whose kid is sick to the extended and unpredictable need for time off that can happen when an employee (me) is diagnosed with stage IV cancer which required three business days off out of every 10 and lots of flexibility for doctors’ appointments.

    Can it go wrong? Oh, absolutely. We’ve come across our share of slackers and the super-heros who step up to cover for them. But the supportive/relaxed attitude of my managers about needing personal time off with pay has *usually* inspired people to give what they can, when they can, with minimal abuse overall.

    And all of that has happened in a 24/7/365 research facility on an industrial work-site … where the rest of the employees on-site had to adhere to an ‘absence’ policy. After pressure during last fall’s H1N1 panic, the rest of the departments on site finally did away with the ‘absence’ policy. They told people that they should take their laptops home every night and be prepared to work from home if their kids were exposed and/or sick. They told people to stay home if they were sick themselves. They suspended the idiotic parochial-school style ‘perfect attendance’ monetary bonus.

    And today, I’m working from home because it’s too risky to drive in. And because I can. ;)

  2. February 1st, 2010 at 5:09 pm
    ME Liz Strauss said

    Hi Pat!
    I agree that Social Strata is in control of their own future, especially if they stay at their small size. They could build something even more unique and valuable. They sure have the right mindset for doing that.

    What’s worked within your group must surely depend on the values of the folks who run it. They must support that ethic of workplace caring and responsibility in the ways that they respond and react to circumstances and model behaviors. It seems the key to such situations … leadership who has those values.

    Recently I spoke with a company that says it wants to be openly social, but management doesn’t trust its employees … hard for me to think that will work. I’m fairly certain they couldn’t do this either.

    You’re lucky to have found such a human environment. But I bet you already know that. :)

  3. February 4th, 2010 at 9:57 am
    Christian Messer said

    What a great post! This subject has been on my mind a lot lately…although my idea is mandatory vacation time at all companies in the U.S. Happy, healthy employees leads to extraordinary productivity.

    It is sad that this probably wouldn’t work at larger firms, but that is what has been built-in – company culture varies from one to the next. One company I know of (and one department specifically) most people there have settled for their job. They either don’t know or don’t care that there are greener pastures out there. The company culture is not a rewarding one – pizza once in a while is just pizza.

    It would be wonderful if more companies valued their employees more as people than numbers or drones. But I don’t think that is going to happen any time soon. If we all care enough and push, the tide may change, but for the interim, people at most companies will just stay stuck.

  4. February 8th, 2010 at 12:23 pm
    ME Liz Strauss said

    Hi Christian!
    I so agree with what you say here, especially what comes of a culture which accepts people who “settle” for their job … meaning that the culture also settles for them and their lower investment in what they do. Tom Peters has said, “A company either supports overachievers or underachievers and the unsupported group feels unappreciated and leaves.” I’ve seen that too.

    What if we all could make this happen as a culture. :)

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