The Guardian view on unlimited time off: too good to be true

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/25/guardian-view-unlimited-time-off-too-good-true

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When Richard Branson announces that Virgin employees can take as much holiday as they want, it seems unlikely that he means to make train travel more uncertain than it already is by allowing drivers to choose duvet days at random, nor to risk passengers for New York turning up at the airport to find the flight’s cancelled because the cabin crew have decided to take a long weekend in Rome. In fact, the offer is for employees at the family offices rather than any of the Virgin enterprises. And that is not the only way in which what, on the face of it, appears attractive and generous is in fact about as liberating for the employee as, say, hot-desking. It is just one more way of chaining the workers to their desks by intimating that if they go for a coffee someone will take their seat. Or their job.

Mr Branson scarcely troubled to disguise the flimsiness of his offer. The decision whether to take holiday, he said, would reflect an employee’s confidence that they were on top of their jobs, in complete control of all their projects, and that their absence would do no harm to the company – or their career. It is a souped-up version of turning off office emails, itself something all sensible employers should insist on, as some do in Germany, but which most employees fear would be seen as a possibly lethal breach of commitment.

The idea of untracked holiday is taken from Netflix, the Californian company that has revolutionised video streaming. In a recent Harvard Business Review, Patty McCord, the human resources manager who shaped the company’s employment policies back at the turn of the century, gave the game away when she explained that it was the logical extension of the always-on work culture of a tech startup. Netflix might sound as if it is run by a couple of twentysomethings lounging on bean bags and drinking protein smoothies, but its spirit is closer to the era of Mad Men and its employment policies are all about imposing corporate loyalty and company values. No surprise that the policy is not available to Netflix employees in its call centres, any more than Mr Branson was proposing it for his air crews or train staff.

Netflix says its policies are designed to maximise creativity and minimise process. It is hugely successful at what it does. But that does not make it a perfect model. It is fashionable to argue that rights at work can be an unnecessary obstacle to efficiency, an impediment in an age of non-hierarchical company structures where creativity and initiative are valued more highly than suits, ties and punctuality. Rubbish. Netflix draws the analogy that the company has no dress policy but no one turns up naked. Not having an official code doesn’t mean there isn’t one. By failing to spell it out, the management underlines the arbitrary nature of its power. Clear rules can protect the weak. Without mutual confidence, ultimately underwritten in law, there can be no mutual trust.