Auckland software development company Actionstep reveals how it has been with unlimited leave for employees as conversations around four-day weeks increase. Video / NZ Herald
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One company’s radical unlimited leave policy is here to stay.
New Zealand-founded software company Actionstep announced they’ll continue to un-cap staff’s leave for good, following a successful year-long trial.
“As a leadership team, we sat down and went, is this going well? We went Yes. And should we make it permanent? Yes. So it was very straightforward,” Actionstep’s vice president of engineering Stevie Mayhew told NZ Herald Focus.
It comes as Kiwis signal support for more flexible work conditions including a move to four-day working weeks.
Actionstep considered the four-week model but found that un-capping leave as an alternative approach, worked best, and was far easier to implement
“Overall it’s very easy, especially in New Zealand because we’ve just kept the minimum 20 days as standard and then you accumulate,” Mayhew said.
Stevie Mayhew, Actionstep vice president of engineering. Photo / Jed Bradley
The company’s average leave balance shows the majority of staff have taken more than the minimum 20 days. But it’s not excessive, unlike criticism that staff would abuse the high-trust model.
Customer support team lead Becca Worthington just returned from a three-week break in Europe and said it was nice to not have the stress of monitoring her leave balance.
She added the policy had made a “massive” difference to work-life balance and managing stress for staff.
“I guess the biggest benefit is not being stressed about taking time off when you need it to have that healthy work balance,” Worthington said.
“It’s about taking the time to understand how employee wellbeing affects the work that they produce. It’s about understanding the balance between valuing work over time or time over work and finding the middle ground between trusting your employees that they’re gonna work hard.”
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins wasn’t opposed to the idea of evolving workplaces to include things like four-day weeks, saying he believed businesses could drive the change themselves.
“I think that’s really positive and healthy where that can be facilitated,” Hipkins said during his post-cabinet press conference on Monday.
“We have focused as a Government on making sure that the arrangements for more flexible working conditions do support businesses and workers to have those kind of discussions. There’s a lot of flexibility in our labor market environment and our employment laws at the moment for businesses and employees to agree on those things.”
