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a "unlimited vacation" policy means they treat you like adults and don't need to track your vacation. They expect you to act like adults and not take an inordinate amount while getting your work done. If you're the kind of person who would try to take advantage of it, then you are proving you can't be trusted.
My company treats me like an adult even with a set amount of vacation days. Because I am salaried (i.e., don't need to submit timesheets), I put a request through the online system and it gets approved immediately. My manager doesn't have to approve the request.
A thoughtful, mature, and committed employee cannot read the employer's mind to see what is acceptable in this newfangled "unlimited" and deceptively named vacation policy. And if the employee guesses wrong, he or she may get in trouble.
Are you kidding me? You don't need to read your employers' mind so you don't get into trouble. That should only happen to people with communication or social disabilities who can't read situations. Surely every decent employee knows the workload of the team and expectations of the managers. If not, ask!
You seem to think that people just take off without telling anyone. Under our open leave policy, managers still have to sign off on leave schedules, and they will say no if the timing won't work for the team.
Are you kidding me? You don't need to read your employers' mind so you don't get into trouble. That should only happen to people with communication or social disabilities who can't read situations. Surely every decent employee knows the workload of the team and expectations of the managers. If not, ask!
You seem to think that people just take off without telling anyone. Under our open leave policy, managers still have to sign off on leave schedules, and they will say no if the timing won't work for the team.
Of course people can't take off on a vacation without telling anyone. I never said that and that is absurd. And here lies the true limitation as you have pointed out. Managers have to approve the "unlimited" time off so that this name has no basis in reality. It simply is not true that employees can take all the time they want. Yet "unlimited" says otherwise.
The problem is asking for that time in the first place. You don't take off on your own. Let's say Employee A figures he wants to take 10 weeks of vacation this year. Employee B figures he doesn't need any vacation at all this year. Both employees inform management of their decision. Since management did not provide a clear communication on how much vacation this year is acceptable, then Employee A may be blamed for requesting too much. You see, since management has said "unlimited" vacation, then no amount requested can be too much. But that is not the case. So those employees who select the most vacation time are apt to be in trouble with management. Management will keep track of all vacation time, and may decide who to discipline or get rid of.
Even just requesting a lot of time off and not getting it approved can result in an employee losing credibility and start having a reputation of being a vacation hound and not a person who is interested in their job. And that is what a lot of employees are afraid of. If they request more time off than their coworkers, that they will be perceived as slackers. This creates a fear that only taking a small amount or no vacation can remedy.
So it would be great to be able to read the employer's mind to see how much vacation time is really acceptable. And if you ask then you are in danger of appearing to be too interested in vacations rather than your work.
My son worked for an employer that switched to this. The policy ended about 6 months later, right after the CEO figured out that one of the full-time employees was taking a vacation day every Friday. The company blew out vacation balances going into the unlimited policy and once it switched back to a balance-based vacation system, HR there made everyone start over from a zero leave balance.
...if we switched to unlimited vacation here in the U.S., we'd be free to work whenever we want and wherever we want.
How are we not free to do that now? And when you say "we", what do you mean? For it to affect everyone, are you suggesting it be mandatory, that every employer no matter what must offer unlimited vacation by law? No exceptions? Wouldn't that also mean the law would have to define "unlimited"? What about people who are perfectly happy with their current systems, who like being able to "bank" PTO? Eff them, they need to get with the program or be fired/jailed?
The problem is knowing how much vacation time is adequate, since the employer does not communicate that to the employee, leaving it as "unlimited". Of course it is not unlimited. Business communications should be clear in expectations with no room for misunderstandings. If employers do indeed want responsible people to take appropriate amounts of vacation, then they should communicate that in appropriate language. For instance, giving it a name such as a "responsible vacation policy" and not a misleading "unlimited vacation policy".
In some workplaces, there is so much neverending work that it is never a good time to take a vacation. That was the case in the jobs that I had. If my jobs had an "unlimited vacation policy" my colleagues and I would never had been able to take vacations due to our heavy workloads.
Whether it is intended or not, "unlimited vacation" companies don't have to pay out unused vacation time to existing or departing employees so that is to the employer's and not the employee's advantage. I think that the choice of the word "unlimited" says it all. Just a way to deceive.
But they do communicate. You have conversations with your boss before taking vacations. No company with a healthy culture would ask an employee to work through a vacation. Unlimited vacation policies are based on mutual trust. I wouldn't for the life of me stay at a company that's toxic enough to not allow people to take vacations. I have a few days off around easter this year, we're in the middle of a very major project and my boss yelled at me before I left for telling people to call my cell phone if they need me. She knows I've been stressed and needed a break.
You are right though, if your company has a bad enough culture that management would ask you to work anyway, unlimited vacation wouldn't work, but I don't see why a person would stay at a company with that kind of culture either way.
I was simply responding to your statement that if we switched to unlimited vacation here in the U.S., we'd be free to work whenever we want and wherever we want. Nothing more, nothing less.
So sorry flyers- I quoted the wrong post. My comment was pertaining to the post where you said "[France et al] pays for it too with exorbitant taxes"
But they do communicate. You have conversations with your boss before taking vacations. No company with a healthy culture would ask an employee to work through a vacation.
Have you ever worked somewhere with one of those policies, or are you purely going off of the phrase "unlimited vacation" alone?
Certainly management communicates as to when employees can take vacations, no matter what type of policy they have. But the "unlimited" remains deceptive. Perhaps that is the moniker that bothers me and other posters the most.
I have never worked anywhere where this "unlimited" vacation policy was in effect. My colleagues and I were always allocated a certain amount of vacation time every year based on seniority. I have worked for challenging companies but was always able to take vacations, sometimes having to fight for them.
However, at my last company where I worked at for 28 years, one of the few good things was the ability to take vacations without any problems as long as they were scheduled at least a couple of months in advance. And it didn't matter what your workload was or how many active projects that you had. It was not possible to predict that months in advance. And my colleagues and I always had too much work all the time anyway so it was never a good time to take a vacation. But the company was accommodating in that way. And we knew that we had a set amount to use every year and planned for it.
But with this "unlimited" vacation policy it is not clear how much you could take. If I suddenly found myself working for a company that had that policy and didn't care much about my credibility or career at that company, I would sit down with my boss and say that I am planning my vacation for the year and since you have an unlimited vacation policy, I'm taking the whole year off. The boss would then say that is ridiculous and I would agree. I would then say ok how about half the year. The boss would say that is also ridiculous and I would agree again. I would then keep reducing the vacation amount until the boss would agree. Thus, I would have an answer from my boss as to the real amount of vacation time I could take per year, despite the "unlimited" label. Then I would schedule that time for the whole year if that was possible based on staffing and workloads. So the boss would look like an idiot for having to come up with a maximum amount on a supposed "unlimited" vacation policy. If he or she was evasive in discussing vacation time, then I would know it was a scam. A real manager could easily give a ballpark estimate of how many days a month you could take as vacation time on the average.
So the bottom line is I don't care how companies design their vacation policies. However, putting a label of "unlimited" communicates false information to the employee. Simply putting a more appropriate name such as "responsible" rather than "unlimited" would help to clear up any confusion and help employees to understand and use this newfangled system.
You'd never think that you'd have to worry about using "all" your unlimited vacation in a given year.
It even sounds incorrect to say.
But having a finite amount of vacation means SOMETHING has to be done with that balance. You use it, and if it's not used, you're cut a check. It must be accounted for in some way.
There is nothing preventing a company from doing the same with vacation. Point is, dates can be blacked out at any time, and the employee has no recourse, and cannot collect anything for being denied.
You may be TOLD that an employer has an unlimited vacation policy, but you will likely NOT be allowed to see the stipulations attached before you are hired.
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