THE TELEGRAPH: Silicon Valley success story, Netflix, shows how a non-policy on holidays can provide the break you need.
Ah, August. It's the month we escape the office, cast off quotidian concerns, recharge our psychic batteries, and – you know what I'm talking about – feel a twinge of guilt.
White-collar workers have an uneasy relationship with holidays. On the one hand, we consider them our due. (And in much of Europe, paid vacations are a right fixed in the law.) On the other hand, we view them as minor betrayals – of our obligations to customers and clients, of our responsibilities to colleagues left behind, even of the values we hold most dear.
That's why most organisations treat vacations the same reluctant way that parents dole out candy to their children. They dispense a certain number of days each year – but once we've reached our allotment, no more sweets for us.
One Silicon Valley company, however, has quietly pioneered an alternative approach. Netflix Inc, is a streaming video and DVD-by-mail service that has amassed 15m subscribers and upended America's brick-and-mortar video rental business.
NOBODY – NOT EMPLOYEES THEMSELVES,
NOT MANAGERS – TRACKS VACATION DAYS
At Netflix, the vacation policy is audaciously simple and simply audacious. Salaried employees can take as much time off as they'd like, whenever they want to take it. Nobody – not employees themselves, not managers – tracks vacation days.
In other words, Netflix's holiday policy is to have no policy at all.
If that sounds like a recipe for anarchic stew, devoid of essential workplace nutrients such as temperance and hard work, think again. In its own way, Netflix's non-policy is more attuned to the nature of 21st century work, and even to the values of industriousness and self-discipline, than its sterner counterparts. >>> Daniel H Pink | Saturday, August 14, 2010
