US only
Microsoft has given its US employees unlimited vacations.
The innovation is called discretionary holidays and will apply to all employees in the United States from January 16th.
Unlimited vacation means that the employee has the right to take days off when he needs it, not limited to the minimum specified in the contract. In particular, Microsoft still provides 10 paid days off per year, sick days and days off for various good reasons. In addition, the new rule means new hires don’t have to wait until they’ve accumulated enough days off to take vacations. The limitation in such systems is exclusively the workflow: if the extra days off do not affect the work of a particular employee, there will be no claims against him.
How, when and where we do our work has changed dramatically. And as we have transformed, upgrading our vacation policy to a more flexible model has been a natural next step.
Hourly workers will not be offered unlimited vacation. Microsoft says federal and state laws make it difficult to grant unlimited leave to such employees. The same applies to employees outside the United States, but already because of the laws of the countries where they live.
It is worth noting that Microosft is far from the first and not the only company to offer its employees unlimited vacations. The same scheme is followed by Salesforce, LinkedIn, Oracle, Netflix and a number of other companies
