Nurture employee culture
The world has moved on from command and control. Confident innovators are giving staff maximum flexibility around their hours, including unlimited holidays to rebalance hard work.
Measured annual leave dates back to when factories were in full flight and compensation was calculated by time spent on the shop floor. Today, many of us work in the participation economy, where workers are measured on input, not time. We’re not necessarily working fewer hours: in fact, according to a 2018 Australia Institute survey, Australians work an average of six hours’ unpaid overtime a week.
Smart businesses of all sizes are finding ways to nourish workplace culture and avoid burnout. Netflix famously uncapped leave back in 2004 but the true pioneer was Brazilian manufacturing company Semco. They introduced it when Ricardo Semler took over from his father in 1981 and quickly became enormously more productive, as well as fostering fierce loyalty among staff.
Three years ago Melbourne innovation consultancy Inventium introduced “rebalance leave”. This fully paid leave is uncapped but with a specific intent, explains founder Dr Amantha Imber.
“Like many consultancies, we work long hours and travel a lot; it’s not an industry that pays overtime and we had exhausted consultants,” says Dr Imber. “Hours were
uncapped but leave was capped at four weeks and that felt unbalanced. I thought both should be uncapped, allowing our people to take responsibility for how much leave they take, based on how much they’re working.” She says calling it rebalance leave was to show that it “wasn’t something we did for fun or publicity, it was for just that – to help staff rebalance.”
Unsurprisingly, the staff – around 14 people – love it, says Dr Imber, who takes at least six weeks of leave a year and a halfday every week to spend the afternoon with her young daughter. “You have to lead by example and there’s a lot of communication. Everyone’s leave is logged, we can all view it and check conflicts, no-one’s taking it selfishly – and they still have four weeks of annual leave that can accrue.” She says it’s also been important to keep rebalance leave distinct from other kinds of leave, including maternity, sick or carer’s leave.
As an organisational psychologist, Dr Imber is disciplined about switching off, particularly as the owner of a small to medium enterprise (SME). For the past year or so, she’s enforced not checking her inbox before lunchtime. “If I’m on email in the morning, I set my day up to be reactive, rather than proactively choosing to work on the most meaningful project I’ve got going on.” And it works.
“It’s changed the game,” she says. “If
I look at my output since I’ve been doing it compared to the year or two before that, it’s completely different. I can achieve more in that uninterrupted block of two to three hours than I could in two or three days when I’m constantly interrupted.”
Other Inventium policies include working the hours that match your natural chronotype or circadian energy levels (morning larks start early and night owls work late) as well as Holacracy, where you’re your own boss. “You have to recruit very carefully for the Holacracy model but when you get people who thrive with that autonomy, they say they can never imagine working anywhere else.”