From: mike@isgtec.com (Mike Sellers)
Newsgroups: misc.jobs.misc,misc.entrepreneurs
Subject: Re: Why Americans get so little vacation -- one true story
Summary: Less is *NOT* more when it comes to vacation -- a case study
Date: 15 Aug 92 14:18:26 GMT
Distribution: world
Organization: ISG Technologies Inc., Mississauga Ontario

[I added the entrepreneurs newsgroup to this because I think there are some 
valuable lessons here for those starting and heading their own companies.]

In article <l8nkgbINN9j6@male.EBay.Sun.COM> tvh@sandman.EBay.Sun.COM writes:
> >I think one of the reasons people use their sick leave for non-sick 
> >purposes is because people in this country just don't get enough vacation 
> >time.  

Definitely.  Haven't you ever heard of people taking "mental health days"?

> I saw an excelent solution to all of this.
> 
> At one hospital where I applied the policy was like comp_time
> except all days were accumulated together and could be used
> as you wish with prior notice being required for more than 3 days off  
> at one time.
> 
> If you think about the amount of time that you can take including
> vacation and sick. I believe that most people have close to 5 weeks 
> per year that they can take off.

At my previous place of employment (at the former leader in the EDA field),
we had a wonderful vacation policy.  You accrued 2 days per month beginning
the first day you were there -- that's 24 days a year, almost 5 working weeks!
This was combined vacation/sick time.  Since people in our industry seem to
be pretty healthy, the company basically rewarded us for being healthy so 
that we could, if we chose, use this all as vacation time (as a matter of
course, most people kept about one week in reserve for unforeseen accidents
and personal needs).  

Now, this was a great place to work -- the environment was nice (private
offices), the work was generally stimulating, it was in a great part of the
country, and their pay scale (as I have since found out!) was on the high
side, especially given the local cost of living.  However, many people cited
the _vacation_ benefit as the #1 reason why they would not work elsewhere.
It was a very powerful incentive to stay, and one that few other companies
could come close to matching.  

Of course, many of us worked very hard, and so a lot of people ended up
having huge backloads of vacation time accrued, up to a use it or lose it 
cieling.  

Then, when things got financially tough for the company, after 2+ years of
non-stop burn-out schedules, a clamp was put on this so that you could not
exit the year with more than 40 hours (5 days) left!  Suddenly people had
to take vacations left and right, or watch their hard-earned time off just
vanish.

To make matters worse, the bean-counters (people for whom I had had at least
grudging respect, up to this fiasco) came up with a brilliant plan to "save"
money by cutting back on vacation time accrual rates.  So, in addition to
telling people they had to meet their current schedules AND finally take
their vacation time, AND as thanks for their years of hard work, the accrual
rate was cut in half: For the last nine months of that year, we earned 1 day
per month instead of 2.  This effectively torpedoed the #1 benefit at the
company at precisely the time when company morale needed the most help.

The truly brilliant part about this was that *there was NO money savings*!
The accountants sold this to the Executive Board based on an amazingly 
faulty analysis (accountants use smoke and mirrors too), which became clear
as soon as some of the 2000 other bright minds in the company examined it.
Eventually they even *admitted* that the sole purpose of this plan was not
to save money by not paying into an accural account (since this money would
have to be paid to the individuals anyway, it was gone either way), but was
instead to *increase productivity*.  These people up and decided that taking
vacation time reduces people's productivity.

Now, this may be true in the parts of the company where piece-work is 
done (processing N forms per day for example), but even then I'd question it.
Certainly a well-rested engineer does better work than does a burned-out one.

The result of all this was that a lot of good people left the company.
Then they had their first-ever layoff.  More people (including me) left
after that.  The company went from 2500+ people to about 1800 people,
lost market share, and is still in a downward spiral (though as I understand
it, the vacation policy has been restored).  I don't mean to suggest that
cutting the vacation accural rate was the root cause of all of this company's
woes; it wasn't.  However, I think both the original policy and the change
in that policy tell us a lot about what a company thinks of its people.

A company that wants it's people to be happy and productive for the long
term will do whatever it can to ensure this, and to ensure that they stay
for the long term.  A company that is scrabbling for the short-term, however,
will make short-term oriented decisions, and reap the consequences over the
long term.  This company has shown the truth of this with amazing clarity.

--
              Mike Sellers      User Interface Team Leader
           mike@isgtec.com      ISG Technologies, Toronto, Canada
              "Actum ne agas" -- Do not do what has been done.
                         Furare tantum ab Optimis