In New Zealand, holiday pay is accrued by your employer and paid out to you when you take time off or when your employment ends. This generally means that when you leave a company you get your unused holiday pay paid out to you in a lump sum, which can be helpful when looking for a new job.
With unlimited vacation time, I guess you'd have to use it or lose it. I'd probably be more inclined to take time off during the year than see the opportunity be wasted. If holiday pay can be saved up it doesn't feel like there's an opportunity cost to not taking time off.
The skeptic in me suspects that companies doing this are counting on group dynamics to bring the actual number of vacation days below the usual number.
I looked around on Google a bit for statistics, but I couldn't find them. I did find some research that mentions unlimited leave / vacation and they found that 1% of companies offered it last year, but they don't show how much people use it.
http://media.npr.org/assets/news/2010/08/11/survey.pdf
Some articles mention studies showing that productivity has gone up as a result of such a policy. Again, the skeptic in me wonders how much of that productivity is due to people taking less holidays. On the other hand, I rarely trust any metric of productivity anyway.
Comments
In New Zealand, holiday pay is accrued by your employer and paid out to you when you take time off or when your employment ends. This generally means that when you leave a company you get your unused holiday pay paid out to you in a lump sum, which can be helpful when looking for a new job.
With unlimited vacation time, I guess you'd have to use it or lose it. I'd probably be more inclined to take time off during the year than see the opportunity be wasted. If holiday pay can be saved up it doesn't feel like there's an opportunity cost to not taking time off.
The skeptic in me suspects that companies doing this are counting on group dynamics to bring the actual number of vacation days below the usual number.
I looked around on Google a bit for statistics, but I couldn't find them. I did find some research that mentions unlimited leave / vacation and they found that 1% of companies offered it last year, but they don't show how much people use it. http://media.npr.org/assets/news/2010/08/11/survey.pdf
Some articles mention studies showing that productivity has gone up as a result of such a policy. Again, the skeptic in me wonders how much of that productivity is due to people taking less holidays. On the other hand, I rarely trust any metric of productivity anyway.
That's the confusing part. How much do you actually take..?