Unlimited Time Off?

Beverly Flaxington is a practice management consultant. She answers questions from advisors facing human resource issues. To submit yours, email us here.

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Dear Bev,

We recently hired a millennial into a client-servicing role. She doesn’t have a great deal of financial experience, but we believe we can teach her the fundamentals. We like her attitude and approach and know it will fit into our culture.

During the interview process, she talked about another job she was considering and mentioned one of the benefits was “unlimited paid time off.” My partner and I were taken aback by this. How could any company offer their staff this perk? We didn’t know if she was embellishing and trying to negotiate a better package. We ended up agreeing to let her work from home two days a week. Now my partner is second-guessing whether she was completely truthful.

Have you heard of this? Is this really a thing in some firms?

T.I.

Dear T.I.,

The short answer to your question is “yes,” I absolutely have heard of this and it is a trend in many companies trying to attract millennials. The irony is that among the companies that are doing this, there is no abuse of time off. It’s almost as if employees recognize the risk the firm is taking and they don’t want to be the one to upset everything and have the perk either taken away or punish the company. Similarly, I see the recent news that Microsoft is utilizing a four-day workweek and its productivity is soaring as a result.