Here’s How Much Time We Take Off At Buffer – Our New Time Off Dashboard
By Dave Chapman
This specific project was meant to help our team members prioritize their mental health by providing a deep dive into how we utilize our vacation time as a company.
Amy Lee Bennett, Carlos Muñoz, and Juliana Gomez also contributed to this blog post.
Transparency is one of our core values at Buffer. We've found that it builds trust, holds us accountable, and can push our industry forward, and one of the ways we embrace this value is by publishing public dashboards to share things like our salaries and revenue.
We're excited to add a new transparent dashboard to share our time off stats here. We hope this will contribute to conversations around healthy workplaces and how employers can better support their employees’ mental health and well-being through four-day work weeks and various types of personal leave.
Our teammates need planned time away from work to stay healthy. Many studies have shown that time away from work improves mental and physical health, prevents burnout, and promotes a better work-life balance. But according to Expedia’s 2022 Vacation Deprivation report, 61 percent of American workers feel that their vacations don’t feel like “true vacations” and unplugging from work is steadily becoming more challenging. A whopping 71 percent of workers are feeling more burned out than ever.
Why an unlimited vacation policy, isn’t always the best policy
Initially, we believed an unlimited vacation policy would be the solution and we felt it aligned with our intention to offer generous compensation and benefits. And who wouldn’t love unlimited time off from work, right? Ironically, fewer team members took time off, and it wasn’t just the case at Buffer: studies have shown that unlimited vacation policies can actually hinder employees from taking time off work. So we went back to the drawing board and decided to go in an entirely different direction: encouraging all teammates to take a minimum of three weeks off per year (15 days), in addition to national holidays.
So far, this feels like a good balance for our team. We can still provide parameters around minimum vacation time (which mitigates any awkwardness or qualms about taking time off under unlimited vacation policies) whilst facilitating other flexible paid time off options. Some of these include:
- Asking all new parents to take 16 weeks off for family leave and any additional time needed for birthing parents.
- A six-week paid sabbatical for every team member after five years, which teammates can use however they’d like. We’ve seen team members travel the world, focus on side projects, and spend quality time with family.
- Volunteer leave to empower team members to take time off work to make an impact on initiatives they feel called to support.
- A Local Election Day, so teammates can take time off to vote …read more
Source:: Buffer Blog
Author: Aaron
