While it may be every worker’s dream to take as much time off as they want without having their company track them, some find this pressures them to work longer instead.
In a report by the New York Times, IBM has done away with tracking vacation for all its 350,000 employees, allowing them to take time off according to their discretion. IBM’s vice president of independent software vendor alliances, Mark L. Hanny, said, “It’s like when you went to college and you didn’t have high school teachers nagging you anymore. Employees like that we put more accountability on them.”
However, many workers have found that the flip side to such a system is the implicit pressure to keep up with emails and office dealings even while on holiday.
Furthermore, if their bosses do not take time off, it creates an unwarranted pressure for subordinates not to take any time off. “If leadership never takes time off, people will be skeptical whether they can. There is the potential for a domino effect.” a Hewitt consultant was quoted as saying in the report.
