No vacation policy at wisnet.com

Make sure your inflection is on the correct word when you read that title.

At wisnet.com, we have always believed in being flexible around our team’s schedules. This year, we have formalized it with our flexible vacation policy, meaning that we don’t have one any more.

Long ago, there was a time when…

  • ‘punching the clock’ meant something
  • docking pay for being late to the office was standard practice
  • tracking vacation time was the norm

In many industries, these policies still apply, often for good reason. However, today we embrace a time when walking out of the office doesn’t mean the work day is over. Many of us return home only to answer emails late in the evening, read blog articles, or cram in those last few lines of code before we head off to bed. Our entire society’s view of how work and home life intermingle has changed dramatically due to technology.

The employees at wisnet.com are no exception to this devoted relationship to our work. But with that said, family and personal time are of the utmost importance to our company. In order to do our jobs the best we can, we need to ensure we are enriching ourselves in ways beyond the office doors. This is why wisnet.com has always had a flexible vacation policy. From research time out of the office, to community involvement, to simply spending time with our families, we have always believed that our time away from the office is just as important as our time in the office.

It wasn’t until this year that we actually formalized this policy. We realized that our employees were so devoted to their work, they took very little time for themselves throughout the week. A flexible vacation policy doesn’t mean we spend less than 40 hours a week in the office, it means that we are free to take time in a day to accomplish other tasks if we need to. Employees are able to take the time they need and come back the next day refreshed and ready to be fully productive. This is what is called a results-driven work environment.

As we adopt the official flexible vacation policy, we are more concerned that employees will avoid taking any vacation at all, rather than abusing this policy.

  • employees are able to manage and prioritize their time
  • administration time on tracking and implementing vacation policies is non-existent
  • flexible research time helps us keep our clients ahead of the curve
  • a results-driven environment means that we are proving ourselves and our work everyday

Before implementing this policy, we spent a lot of time researching the experiences of other companies to see how successful this policy was. Here are some examples if you want to read further:

http://blog.7geese.com/2012/03/20/the-unlimited-vacation-policy/

http://money.cnn.com/2011/01/31/news/companies/no_vacation_policies.fortune/index.htm

Thus far, the flexible vacation policy has been a huge success. Our employees have taken some time for themselves and returned with new ideas and innovations, and have sandboxed some pretty sweet new programs that will make what we do on a daily basis better. We have written articles for our peers and tackled those projects for clients that we couldn’t accomplish in the typical workday. This is all part of the wisnet.com initiative to embrace an era of evolution. If you have any questions for wisnet.com about our flexible vacation policy, drop us an email at customercare@wisnet.com.