What is your time off policy for remote workers?
Answer Connect
We are pretty flexible. We allow the majority of our employees to self-schedule, so this helps team members to schedule around things they might otherwise have to request time off for. Of course, employees can request time off, and that is done pretty easily as well.
Appirio
Appirio has a very generous policy when it comes to time off. Employees are given 15 days of vacation annually in their first and second year of employment, and then 18 days annually in their third, fourth, and fifth years of employment. Employees that have been with us over six years are given 20 days of vacation. We also offer 9 paid holidays each calendar year.
We have do not have a policy when it comes to sick time or personal illness. Appirio recognizes that an employee may need to miss work due to emergencies, personal, or immediate family illness, or medical appointments during office hours. We just ask that this does not exceed a reasonable amount.
Attentiv
If tasks are getting completed to the team’s satisfaction and in a timely manner, we’re not too concerned about time off. We trust our team members to manage their own time, and so long as we have a heads up before they take off, we aren’t too concerned about the occasional vacation day.
Automattic
We have an open time off policy, which translates to take the time off that you need. We ask each person to discuss time off with their team lead and post to a time off P2. That way, it’s transparent when people are available and when they’re offline.
Beutler Ink
All our team members have at least 10 days of paid vacation per year, in addition to Federal holidays. The number of days increases with tenure. We also provide paid time off for illness, and paid leaves for maternity / paternity leave.
Big Universe, Inc.
Currently, we provide a typical 2-week off with 11 paid holidays (including 2 floating holidays). However, we are seriously considering moving to an unlimited PTO model as many small and large companies (e.g. Netflix, Virgin) have.
Canonical
When working with a globally remote workforce, it’s important to observe local laws, regulations, and customs. We observe country specific holidays and offer a leave policy anywhere from 15-25 days off per calendar year depending on the location.
To support the work life balance of our workforce, Canonical provides team members ‘Swap days’ which can be used to make up for time lost due to travel requirements.
Ciao Bambino! Inc.
We do not have a time off limit. However, for it to be worth my while to manage our resources, they have to contribute a minimum amount.
CloudPeeps
In the early days of CloudPeeps, we had a really flexible vacation policy that I called “Aussie-style”. (In Australia, you get four weeks of paid vacation.) We didn’t really monitor it. As we’ve scaled, we’ve become tighter with our operations and more aware of the stage we’re at. We now have two weeks of paid vacation that accrues, and unlimited additional time off that is unpaid.
Coalition Technologies
We have a generous leave accrual system and and we also have paid holidays. Coalition Technologies encourages a healthy work-life balance. We recognize that a healthy reward structure is an important part of motivating team members, and part of that structure includes giving people time away from work. Overworking only leads to declines in productivity, so we would rather have a refreshed staff than an overworked one.
Collage.com
We’re very flexible when it comes to time off, so long as employees make sure their work is being taken care of and aren’t missing important deadlines or meetings.
DevriX
DevriX has an open time-off policy that allows people to take time off whenever they choose. This, however, should be coordinated upfront and be in compliance with the status of the projects a team member works on in order to ensure 1st class customer service in any way possible.
Occasionally we force people to take time off if they seem to be burning out, as we don’t want to cross the line when they burn out completely and need a few months off to recover.
Doist
Work-life balance is something we take very seriously. We set the expectation from the get-go that no one should be working long hours or during the weekends. Eight hours of effective work five days a week is more than enough to get everything done (we are in the productivity business, after all). We enforce this rule strictly!
In addition to a balanced day-to-day schedule, full time employees have 25 days of mandatory vacation per year and of course all national holidays in their country of residence.
Full-time employees who have successfully passed their three-month trial period are eligible for Doist’s maternity and paternity leave which is 18 weeks of PTO for mothers and 5 weeks of PTO for fathers or adoptive parents.
Flex Professionals
Vacation, sick and personal leave are lumped together. We take time off seriously. When an employee formally requests time off for an extended period of time (i.e. longer than a long weekend), we make sure there is a plan in place to handle that person’s workload so that he/she is not bothered while out of the office. For smaller breaks, we do not monitor hours and time off, as long as the employee is responsive to clients and maintaining productivity standards. This gives our trusted employees a lot of flexibility to balance work and home without having to feel guilty about it. In return, they are motivated to remain productive.
FMTC
We have “unlimited time off” for our salary workers. Our rule of thumb is if you’re wondering if you’re taking too much time off, then you are. At the same time, we review employees time-off calendars and make sure they’re actually taking vacation as well. We’ve issued warnings to vacationing employees to not check in or risk having their accounts temporarily disabled; we value our time off and want others to as well.
Fog Creek Software
Each Fog Creek employee gets unlimited sick time and 20 vacation days per year. After being an employee for 3 years, that vacation time bumps up to 25 days.
Formstack
All employees are offered 18 days a year of paid time off, which is built up over their first year on the job. Over time, their PTO offering is increased. We do cap PTO accumulation so as to encourage vacations. We have the belief that unlimited PTO actually increases the number of days people work.
GitHub, Inc.
We have an unlimited paid time off policy. As long as people coordinate any leave they take with their teams to make sure the schedule makes sense and doesn’t leave anyone hanging, then we want people to be able to take the time off they need so that they can be as switched on as possible when they are working.
The biggest problem with “unlimited” though is that it often means people don’t end up taking enough time off, which is counter-intuitive. There’s been some really interesting discussions on this topic in the technology industry lately, and we’ve definitely been discussing internally how we can make our policies more effective too.
Go Fish Digital
Remote working is great because you have the luxury of not using vacation days while traveling if you don’t want to. Our policy is that if you work, great, work from anywhere. If you want to take time off, that is fine too, and we provide vacation days for that.
Greenback Expat Tax Services
We focus on the outcomes of work, not on specifics of time off. As mentioned above, we generally have people working too many hours, not too few. So we do encourage time off, and because we have built trust with our team members, we don’t really ‘track’ the time and accept or deny requests based on a set number of days. Our team limits vacation requests during our busy season and because they typically work a lot of extra hours during that time, we are more liberal with time off requests in the slower months. As long as someone coordinates with other team members to ensure their job is ‘covered’ while they are out and the time off doesn’t negatively impact the business (which it rarely does), we are happy to give them time to ‘recharge their batteries’.
Groove
You must take time off. That’s about as far as the written policy goes. We don’t have limits; it’s especially easy to get burnt out working solo, so it’s important that the people you hire are mature enough to know — and not be afraid to say — when they need a break. Vacation time is valued here.
Hanno
We don’t track time off with much attention, other than to make sure that people are taking enough of it! We have self-set salaries, which means that we leave it up to employees to decide how they want to balance work and personal life. Some favour a higher salary and feel like taking less holiday. Others feel that salary is less of a priority and that they’d rather have much more time off. Either way is fine–the key thing for us is to make sure that employees are looking after themselves well enough and taking enough time away from screens and projects to recharge properly. That’s easy to neglect when you’re a remote team, but it’s something that’s very important to us.
Help Scout
We provide unlimited time off, and we highly encourage at least 4 weeks off out of the year. If someone hasn’t taken off in a long time, we ask them to. We trust that every employee will be smart with this, and so far, there has been no issues.
Hubstaff
Our employees are all virtual and free to take time off as they want. We work with responsible team members who will be reasonable with this, ie. no leaving for a year-long vacation with 5 minutes notice. As long as the work is covered and we’ve had ample notice, we all understand the perks of the digital nomad lifestyle.
Inpsyde GmbH
Since our working hours are pretty flexible, we don’t really have a time off policy, but we prefer, that everyone is at their computer between 10am – 3pm, but if they have some errands, they just have to tell us in a Slack channel and that’s ok.
Inspired HR
We have no formal vacation policy. It is important that our client’s needs are still met when a team member is away, so we make sure there is always sufficient coverage.
InVisionApp
We have an unlimited time off policy. Everybody’s trusted to take time off as they see fit.
iTutorGroup
Take time off when you want to! Just remember to schedule it in advance!
Jackson River
We have a fairly standard PTO policy where people accrue time off for vacation and sick time. We have a high number of part-time workers too, in keeping with our beliefs about workplace flexibility.
Jungle Scout
Unlimited paid vacation. Many team members travel and work on the go, mixing the two. But we wholeheartedly encourage and support all team members to take real time off and get some downtime, too.
Knobs.co
Each person takes as much time off as they need, though they are expected to coordinate with other staff to make sure nothing falls through the cracks in their absence.
LiquidSpace
We’re a results-driven company, and we have a flexible time-off policy. We technically offer unlimited vacation days because we know the importance of work-life balance to individual success.
Melewi
Melewi has an unlimited leave policy. As long as it’s within reason, of course. Surprisingly though, since we’re remote and it’s quite easy to bring work, most of us travel around while working.
Our only requirement for filing blocked leaves is enough notice so we can plan around it and make sure all parts are covered by someone else if needed.
Personally though, with the flexibility our setup provides, I think the team enjoys working together so much that it’s rare that anyone takes blocked leave longer than a couple of days.
MomsRising
As a mom friendly organization we have a generous time off policy that includes paid sick days and paid family leave.
NodeSource
Unlimited. We encourage people to take time to recharge. Over the long term, people are more productive and frankly happier when they have time to themselves without being held to some archaic “accrual” system for PTO. We simply don’t buy into that model. Finally, since we are globally distributed, the concept of only 2 weeks paid vacation is ridiculous to nearly every non-American worker so unlimited vacation days is a win-win for everyone.
Omni Interactions
Contractors are in charge of their business—they can choose to work one week and not work the next week. We do ask for a commitment two weeks in advance, so we can properly set expectations with our clients.
OnTheGo Systems
Members have paid vacations plus public holidays off in the country where they live. The key is communication and making sure the time off is reported well in advance so that the team can be organized.
OpenSnow
Everyone gets unlimited time off. If goals are clearly communicated and employees are responsible, we don’t need to babysit with restrictive PTO policies.
Pagely
We have minimum three-week vacation policy to prevent burnout. We also provide parental leave of up to 12 weeks. Our team is really good at managing their time and so no formal policy is really needed. If we did have one, it would be to not leave your team hanging. You want to go Asia for two weeks, that is fine. Just make sure you are not putting the team in a pinch and remember you’ll have to cover someone else when they want to go to the beach for a month in the summer.
Parse.ly
We offer time-off to our employees with 24-hour notice. We’re an incredibly collaborative and connected team, so this is important mostly to give your co-workers notice about when you’ll be available. We also employ a Work From Home model, which gives some flexibility for team members with children or those who might have an errand or doctor’s appointment in the middle of the day. It makes the journey of commuting a little less burdensome.
In addition to time off and vacation, we offer sabbatical and generous paternity/maternity leave. After five years with Parse.ly, team members are offered a 5-week, paid sabbatical. Your sabbatical is meant to be taken “all at once” — a nice, extended break from work that could be used to travel, to explore alternative interests, volunteer for an organization, or simply have the world’s greatest paid staycation. Two weeks of this sabbatical can also be preemptively added to your paid maternity/paternity leave, assuming you will stay at the company long enough to earn said sabbatical.
Referral Rock
We have a few set major holidays as company holidays and instead give more PTO days for team members to use as they please. Funnily enough, we started out with even fewer holidays, but many of the team members felt a bit miffed that they had to use PTO days for certain holidays even though we gave more PTO days. Even though the number of days was the same, the perception was not great, so we made some changes.
Remote Year
We utilize an unlimited time off policy. As a global company, we find this is the best policy to apply across all of our team members to account for differences in local holidays and a variety of other factors. This also allows employees who need to to recover from illness or time to dedicate to family.
RunRepeat
You can take off whenever you like, but we pay you by the hour. You get one to five weeks of vacation depending on how long you’ve been in the company (three years in the company, three weeks vacation, etc.). There are no working hours and we work from most time zones. I think that the nature of the business has a great impact on what makes sense. For us, we do not need instant replies. We don’t have any customer service or similar. About vacation—one must take off and be 100% off unless there’s something urgent and important to answer.
Scrapinghub
We give everybody 20 paid vacation days per year (they generate 1.66 vacation days per month worked) and the local country holidays wherever they happen to live in. We’ve found that having local holidays off reduces friction. Most people prefer to enjoy their own country holidays off and we are OK with that. It is a bit harder to manage, but it’s worth the effort. We have also made time off management completely distributed.
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SimpleTexting
We’re very loose with time off and people don’t take advantage. We don’t have a formal sick-days policy either—so you can call it unlimited. It’s all about trust.
Sococo
Pretty basic – any PTO needs to be checked with your team and cleared with your manager. There’s nothing more formal than that in place, as our Agile framework keeps communication really clear on the team. On a small team, even one person’s absence can have an impact, and recognizing this emphasizes the importance of clear communication.
SoftwareMill
People charge daily. If they do not work, they don’t make money. It is also possible to have a lower daily rate and include 20 days off each year.
Stack Overflow
20+ vacation days, with unlimited sick days. We also have generous parental leave and benefits.
Sticker Mule
We don’t track time off but expect people to take roughly 4 weeks vacation. Most of our team doesn’t have set hours so it’s really at their discretion how to approach work.
Summit CPA Group
Flex time with two weeks first year, three weeks second year, and four weeks thereafter.
Sutherland Global Services
Employees earn paid time off. Consultant level employees begin to accrue PTO after 6 months of employment at the rate of 80 hours per year, thru year two. Salaried employees earn PTO from the very beginning of their employment.
TaxJar
We have a MANDATORY vacation policy. We realized that an unlimited vacation policy was having the opposite effect – team members weren’t taking the time they needed to rest and recharge. Now we require everyone to take at least 2 weeks per year off, and we offer a $250 stipend for each of those two weeks. Our culture is based on rockstars who spend their days executing, and it’s important to use that we not burn out.
TeamSnap
No specific policy. Work when you want, take time off when you need it. Coordinate with your teammates so your time off is not disruptive to everyone’s progress. Use your best judgement on what’s right for you and for the company. Maximize your productivity over time. Avoid burnout. Have a life.
The Cheat Sheet
We have a flexible time off policy which provides employees with a generous amount of vacation, allowing them to take off whichever holidays they want.
ThirdPath Institute
Employees start with two weeks of paid vacation. We also accommodate employees with school age children by letting them take extra unpaid time off over the summers.
Toggl
First of all, we have a flexible schedule and the only condition for the remote team members is to have at least some overlapping time with the rest of their team.
As for vacation, each employee is entitled to 28 work days off and everyone celebrates the national holidays of the country they’re located in.
Tortuga
We offer unlimited vacation. I know that some companies have changed policies to minimum vacations, required vacations, or something else. As a travel company, our team has been pretty responsible about taking time off. If that ever changed, we may change course as other companies have. I try to set a good example by taking time off myself and by reminding people to take breaks, especially between big projects, to recharge.
Trade Conductor
You write me when you need (weeks of vacation). You do not have to tell me if you are sick, not working on Wednesday, etc. I only need that information if it is for a longer period of time.
Wordfence
Best in the industry. We provide 21 days PTO. We thought through this carefully and we considered doing what Netflix and a few other companies are doing where we provide unlimited time off. But we felt that this creates a weird situation where, because it’s not specified, our team doesn’t take too much time off because they feel like they’re being judged. So we stated a specific PTO number and then told our team that we want them to actually use the full 21 days. That way we’re sure that they’ll take the breaks they need rather than being uncertain about how much is OK. 21 days is the highest we’ve seen in our industry.
World Wide Web Hosting
All staff members receive 20 days of paid time off per year that increases to 25 days after 3 years. Managers receive 25 days after 1 year with us. Since we are a global company with staff from all over the world, we group holidays into this paid time off. We respect our team’s varying cultures and holidays, so we allow each staff member to determine which holidays are important to them to take off work.
