Peter Mondrose
LinkedIn employees will no longer receive a specific number of days off per year. Instead, managers at the company will work with employees to plan their vacation days.
Discretionary time off (DTO), has become a common practice among many tech companies. Under the policy employees are typically allowed to take time off if they stay on top of their work and catch up when they return.
Linkedin Vice President Pat Wadors said in a blog post that the new policy will start on November 1.
Under the new policy, LinkedIn employees will face “no set minimum or maximum amount of vacation time,” Wadors wrote.
“We are not alone in making this shift to DTO. It’s part of a growing movement to place more focus on results and empowerment, not hours worked,” Wadors said. “And it’s an important step to help employees recharge and keep engaged.”
The unlimited vacation model is already used by the likes of Virgin and General Electric.
Critics of the unlimited vacation days plans claim that most employees already fail to use many of their vacation days. The use of DTO is oftentimes seen as a way to rob employees of the vacation pay they would normally receive for not using their days off.
Many tech companies are implementing DTO because of concern that failing to do so will cause valuable engineers to move on to other tech firms that offer unlimited time off.
LinkedIn grew 37% last year, and it plans to expand by an even larger percent in 2015.
The social enterprise platform already employees more than 8,700 workers in 30 cities around the world.
The company’s largest ongoing liability is “accrued vacation and other employee-related expenses,” according to the company’s public filings. The amount totaled more than $ 128 million as of June, which is 46% higher than in December.
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