With the ubiquity of smartphones, work email and communication platforms such as Slack, office workers are finding it increasingly difficult to get away from work. Working from home has further blurred the line between work time and free time, with office workers working longer and texting more after get off work since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
An Indian company has launched a solution: fine employees who disturb colleagues who are on vacation.
Dream Sports, a fantasy sports company based in India, requires employees to pay a $1,200 fine if they contact a co-worker who is taking a break. Harsh Jain, the company’s founder, told CNBC: “Once a year, you have the opportunity to leave the company’s system for a week…you don’t get Slack messages, Work emails and phone calls.” He calls this time an “unplugged” vacation.
This decision helped clarify reasonable expectations for communicating appropriately with furloughed colleagues. “Nobody wants to be that sucker calling a co-worker who’s on vacation,” Bavet Sheth, co-founder and chief operating officer of Dream Sports, told CNBC. , enforcing vacation time can help companies ensure they are not dependent on any one employee, including the founders themselves.
Dream Sports, located in Mumbai, India, raised US$840 million in November 2021, with a valuation of US$8 billion.
Dream Sports did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
According to a report released by Qualtrics in March 2022, about half of American office workers report working at least one hour a day when they are on vacation. About a quarter of office workers report working at least three hours a day.
Part of the blame is employers’ expectations of workers responding to work messages. More than 30 percent of U.S. office workers say their employer expects them to be able to answer work calls while on vacation.
Governments in some countries have even passed legislation forcing companies to stop messaging employees when they are on vacation. In 2017, France granted office workers “offline rights”, requiring companies to specify the time period when employees do not need to send and receive emails. Spain, Italy, Portugal, Germany and Scotland have similar rules requiring employers to identify periods of time when employees can ignore work messages.
ask people to take time off
The U.S. ranks second to last in granting paid time off to employees, just ahead of the Federated States of Micronesia, according to a study by career resource platform Resume.io. The average American office worker gets only 10 days of paid vacation per year. And the US doesn’t require companies to offer paid time off at all, unlike many other developed nations.
Companies like Netflix and Goldman Sachs offer unlimited paid time off, giving employees the flexibility to take time off as needed. A Harris poll conducted by Fortune magazine in February 2022 showed that about half of American office workers are willing to trade lower wages in exchange for an unlimited vacation policy.
(Still, in the face of an uncertain economic environment, tech and financial firms, once generous with benefits, are now slashing employee perks like free coffee and business travel.)
But experts warn that companies may be setting false expectations about when employees will actually be able to take time off. A British company even found that after implementing the unlimited vacation policy, the vacation time of its employees was lower than the legal minimum vacation time stipulated by the government, so the policy was finally abolished in 2022. (Fortune Chinese website)
Translated by: Liu Jinlong
Reviewer: Wang Hao
With constant access to smartphones, work email, and messaging platforms like Slack, employees are finding it more difficult to step away from work. Working from home has further blurred the line separating work and free time, with employees working longer hours and sending more messages after-hours since the pandemic began.
One Indian company has a solution: Fine employees who bother their colleagues on vacation.
Dream Sports, an Indian fantasy sports company, forces employees to pay $1,200 if they contact people who are on a break. “Once a year, for one week, you’re kicked out of the [company] system…you don’t have Slack, emails, and calls,” founder Harsh Jain told CNBC in an interview, referring to the period as being on “unplug.”
That decision helped set expectations for appropriate communications with those on vacation. “No one wants to be that jerk who called someone who was on unplug,” Bhavit Sheth, founder and chief operating officer for Dream Sports, told CNBC. The founders said enforcing vacation Time helped ensure their company didn’t rely on any one single employee, including the founders themselves.
Dream Sports raised $840 million in a funding round in November 2021, valuing the Mumbai-based company at $8 billion.
Dream Sports didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Roughly half of employees in the US say they work at least one hour a day while on vacation, according to a report from Qualtrics released last March. Almost a quarter reported working at least three hours a day.
An expectation to answer work messages is partly to blame, with over 30% of US workers saying employers expected them to answer phone calls while on break.
Some governments have even used the law to get companies to stop messaging their employees during their time off. In 2017, France granted workers the “right to disconnect,” which required companies to establish periods when employees would not be required to send or receive e . Spain, Italy, Portugal, Germany, and Scotland have established similar rules forcing employers to determine when employees can be free of work messages.
Getting people to take time off
The US is the second-worst country when it comes to granting paid time off to employees, behind only Micronesia, according to a study from career resource platform Resume.io. American workers only get an average of 10 paid vacation days a year. Nor does the US require companies to offer paid leave at all, unlike many other developed economies.
Some companies, like Netflix and Goldman Sachs, offer unlimited paid time off to give workers the flexibility to take a break when they need it. A Harris poll conducted for Fortune in February 2022 reported that about half of US workers would accept a lower salary in exchange for an unlimited leave policy.
(That said, amid economic uncertainty, once-perk-friendly companies in the tech and finance sectors are now slashing employee benefits like free coffee and business travel.)
Yet experts warn that companies could set the wrong expectations about when employees can really take time off. One UK company even found that its employees took less time off under its unlimited leave policy than the statutory minimum required by the government, and ultimately the political dy in 2022.
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