Amdocs today (Wednesday) announces a new policy of unlimited vacation for the 29,000 employees in the global company, 5,000 of them in Israel. Amdocs is not the only one in Israel and in the world that announces such a policy, but according to Yehudit Yampolsky, director of the human resources division, the company has learned lessons from the mistakes made in other companies.
What are those mistakes? According to studies, employees who work in companies that provide unlimited days off tend to take fewer days off than employees whose days off are limited. These figures were correct at least for the year 2020 that large parts of it we spent at home.
According to data from Hi-Bob, which offers an information-based platform for remote work management, including tracking and reporting on vacation days, in 2020 there was an underutilization of vacation days. In the company, which works mainly with growth companies that employ a total of 150,000 workers in Israel and around the world, in 2019 the rate of requests for workers for vacations was 32%, while in 2020 it dropped to only 20%. The cancellation rate of vacations, which stood at 6% in 2019, actually rose to 11% in 2020.
According to Yampolsky, “All the messages that people take less freedom when they have unlimited leave are out of date, they are pre-Corona. We really intend to increase the amount of freedom that people take. One of our measures of success will be that people will take more freedom. We intend to measure managers on “Several times as many employees take time off, encourage managers themselves to take time off and encourage employees as well. I also intend to take many days off. We strongly believe that when people have the freedom to choose they make responsible choices and this will lead to improved productivity and connectivity.”
Yehudit Yampolsky, VP of Human Resources at Amdocs / Photo: Adi Orni
Another criticism was the fact that non-accumulation of vacation days exempts the company from the burden of allowing employees to redeem the vacation days with money when they leave.
Amdocs says that all the vacation days that employees have accumulated so far will remain in their possession and each year they will receive the vacation days according to their employment contract. When they go on vacation they will first redeem their days they are entitled to but they will be able to take more vacation days as they wish.
“This is a very significant time for organizations,” says Yampolsky. “The company, after a year in office, allows them to choose to work in the office, at home or anywhere else, and now we are adding another layer of flexibility, to take as much time off as a person needs.”
“It is important for us to allow the employee to take the time off he needs to do what he chooses, whenever he needs to, regardless of what allocation was right for the days before the panadamia. A lot of people will translate that into a two-week vacation in Greece, “Being isolated with my child without fear of it hurting me on days off I can take to go on vacation in Greece in July. I can decide to travel two weeks to Paris, part of the time I will work. It’s part of the freedom and part of the flexibility of hybrid work to do both.”
Not afraid of people taking advantage of it?
“People will not disappear, we have no doubt that people will do their tasks and consider their team. What we really want to achieve and build tools for it, is to make people take time off and take care of themselves. One of the most significant things of this period is burnout fatigue. We want to give “People should also do it not for a long vacation but to take a few days at home and not think that I am wasting days that I have to save for the summer months.”
The policy will take effect in the United States and Israel on February 28 and then at other sites around the world.