Three years ago, I announced to my team at Inventium that we would be offering unlimited paid leave. Needless to say, the reaction was a positive one. I made the decision to offer unlimited leave to bring more balance into team members’ lives. In management consulting, it is not uncommon for staff to work long hours and travel interstate or overseas somewhat frequently. And in Australia, while leave is capped at four weeks, working hours remain uncapped in our industry. Unlimited leave was lau
as launched to rectify this imbalance. I decided to call it Rebalance Leave. Our policy wasn’t about more leave for leave’s sake. It was about helping staff lead more balanced lives.
Three years on, it is clear that Rebalance Leave has made a huge difference.
My team members now take an average of five-and-a-half weeks leave per year. Engagement scores are in the ninetieth percentile for our industry. Sick leave is a miniscule 2.5 days per person annually, well below the Australian average of eight or nine days per year. And average tenure has almost doubled since this policy launched three years ago.
There are several reasons why an unlimited leave policy can be hugely impactful on morale, tenure and productivity.
Time to self-regulate
In many companies, people work more than the standard 40-hour week. Fifty-plus hour weeks are common in many industries that do not pay overtime, such as professional services, technology and real estate. And for many, dipping into work on weekends is normal, thanks to technology allowing us to always be “on”.
However, when long hours without the benefit of longer holidays becomes the norm, things can get out of whack. We walk around like sleep-deprived zombies, productivity declines, and people’s frustration and exhaustion is often directed back at their company.
Unlimited leave allows for people to self-regulate. We all have different thresholds for how much we can work and how much recovery we need to rebound. By not assuming we all have the same requirement – four weeks – to stay fresh, an uncapped leave policy allows people to design their work and non-work lives around their personal needs.
People can be trusted to self-manage
Traditional command-and-control management essentially treats people like children. This management philosophy assumes that people must be told what to do, and when and how to do it. It assumes that employees cannot be trusted to think for themselves.
However, if you take the opposite approach to management and actually treat people like adults, something interesting happens: they behave like adults.
Inventium deliberately has no rules around Rebalance Leave. Staff are simply told to take what they need to ensure they feel rebalanced and fresh at work. Since launching the policy three years ago, not a single person has abused the policy. And when staff have taken extended periods of leave for reasons other than rebalancing, they simply opt to take the leave as unpaid.
You get the best from people
When people are able to balance or juggle competing work and non-work demands, you get the best of people. They bring energy to the workplace, but also have energy left for their non-work life.
When people are able to take the time off that they need, not surprisingly, they come to work happier. Because it’s hard to be happy when you feel exhausted or burnt out due to too much work and too little recovery time.
And when staff feel happy and healthy, and love the work that they do, they want to stay. One of the most significant changes we have seen at Inventium is that staff tenure has almost doubled. So not only is unlimited leave great for staff, but it’s also great for business.