By John Chandler
Virgin Airline’s Richard Branson did not get filthy rich by making stupid business decisions. This makes his recent announcement that all Virgin employees will receive unlimited vacation really interesting. You read that right: if you work for Virgin, you can take as much time for personal vacation as you choose. You decide! And Branson is not doing this only out of the goodness of his heart; he’s doing it as a strategic move for the profitability of his company.
What does Branson know? He understands that our nation’s 170-year-old industrial-era vacation system is obsolete in terms of attracting and retaining talent. In what some are dubbing the “Participation Age,” the most talented people, when you give them control over their time, will give you their best efforts for making the company more money.
Not everyone is buying this approach. Globally, the United States trails only South Korea in the amount of vacation offered to employees. Less than 1 per cent of American companies offer unlimited vacation.
But these industrial economy time-based policies may be trending toward obsolescence in an emerging results-based economy. Already Netflix, Evernote and a growing number of high-performing technology companies are letting employees decide how much vacation to take. Why? Because they believe that giving people control back over their calendars turns employees into stakeholders, and that stakeholders are better at creating profit and value for companies. Some companies (like Evernote) even give their employees money to use toward vacation. (In order to be reimbursed, though, you do have to prove you used the cash toward vacation!)
This trend has its doubters. But I suspect that in an economy where mobile offices, 24/7 connectedness and a highly competitive scramble to attract the best workers, we’ll see more and more of it. Would you work for a company that offered this to you?
For the church, a trend of the most capable people having more time away from work offers interesting challenges and opportunities. How do we connect meaningfully with people in our congregations who are even more radically mobile? How do we engage them to spend some of this extra time and space for Kingdom causes? My guess is that we’ll see this when congregations create a menu of customized opportunities for serving in intense, high-impact, results-oriented missional causes. My guess is that offering them membership on the ushers committee won’t work.
The workplace may be becoming more humane. My hope is that the church can catch up to this trend and tap the passion and availability set free by increasing vacation currency.