Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It_ The Results-Only Revolution - Cali Ressler [41]
People have an unlimited amount of “paid time off” as long as the work gets done.
Aside from flextime, there is nothing like a company’s vacation policy to make people feel like crap. Take too much vacation and some department martyr is going to Sludge you for having too much fun while she logs in long hours of dedication and suffering. Take too little vacation and some department wiseass is going to accuse you of not having a life, of being an inhuman, workaholic drone who really needs to live a little. Take a vacation during a busy time and you’re abandoning your coworkers in their hour of need. Take a vacation during a slow period and people notice that life goes on without you and question whether you are even doing anything in the first place. What should be a reward—what should make people feel good—is instead a huge Sludge generator.
Vacation time is also doled out in a way that reminds people of their place in the organization. Someone with a lesser position might have to earn their vacation hours based on a formula that takes into account hours worked. Rather than being recognized for your achievements you are rewarded for time in the chair. Meanwhile someone with a higher position might be lavished with vacation time on paper, but then privately reminded that no one above a certain level ever takes all their vacation. Then there are rules for when time off can be taken (please, no vacations in your first six months here) and how it must be reported (using Form V1295 and submitted a month before proposed time off and subject to management approval) and then that delightful practice of making it all disappear at year’s end if you don’t use it, as if someone cooked you a gourmet meal then pulled your plate because you weren’t eating fast enough.
If someone in corporate America has taken a clean vacation (no guilt, no worry, no comment from their boss or coworkers) we’d love to hear about it. You could not design a more miserable, broken system. When it comes to vacation, you cannot win.
In a ROWE people focus on results, not how many hours they’ve logged on the books. Unlimited time off doesn’t mean that everyone is on permanent paid vacation. As we’ve said before, you have more responsibility, not less, in a ROWE. You are responsible to your team members and your customers to get your job done. You can’t stick your coworkers with your job while you hit the beach.
What unlimited time off means is that you are no longer rewarded with chunks of time. In a traditional work environment your job rewards you with hours that it doesn’t own in the first place. In a ROWE your job rewards your results with money. Your time is your own to do with it what you please.
Time off is no longer a reward. Control over your time is the reward.
Just think about those two weeks off or one week off in the traditional work environment. People are so overworked and stressed-out that often when they finally do get a vacation they spend the first three or four days just freaking out over having that much time on their hands. The status quo robs people of their control, and so when they do have total control over their time they don’t know what to do with themselves. You can lose the ability to govern yourself. Or you need so much time just to decompress that your vacation is half over before you’re really enjoying yourself and then when it starts to draw to a close you get a colossal case of the Sunday night dread and you’re