Are extra days off here to stay?
On-site Philz with a commute, or 10-hour days WFH with a few Fridays off?
Rest-and-recharge days. Summer Fridays. Mental health days.
Whatever you call them, extra days off are trendy in tech. The idea is that the shift to remote work blurred the work-life boundary and people have replaced commute time with more Zoom calls. And with everything happening in the world, let’s give people a break.
Do you think they’re here to stay, or just a passing fad?
Why they might fizzle out
In a way, extra days off are a sort of tech flex.
That is, with 80% profit margins, we can afford to work a little less (and maybe some were already working a little less - just from the office). With more rounds of layoffs and a tougher market, maybe they’ll disappear.
There’s also the return to office. Extra days off are a smart replacement for unused in-office perks. But to get people commuting again, you have to make it worth it.
Can on-site Philz and extra days off peacefully coexist?
Why they might persist
Maybe the US cost of labor is rising in a new way where people just work less.
In countries like France and Finland, shorter work days and longer holidays are certainly the norm. We’ve all felt the burnout recently, so maybe long-term culture change will take root here.
Also, for many businesses, extra days off were easy to give. It’s sort of like “unlimited” vacation days, except people actually use them.
High-value for employees, low-cost for employers. Any comp leader who has run a conjoint survey knows programs like extended parental leave and ESPP can have great ROI compared to increased salaries and bonuses.
How expensive are extra days off?
There are no direct costs: extra days off are free to give.
But the loss in productivity is big.
Sticking with tech, let’s use the revenue per employee at PayPal of $600,000. If there are 250 working days per year, each day of work is $2,400 in revenue per employee. That means that an extra day off for 30,000 employees at PayPal costs $72 million in productivity losses.
You might say that on the margin, an extra day here or there doesn’t change productivity for the average salaried tech employee; and maybe you’re right.
But in aggregate, over time? 🤷
I, for one, welcome more days off. We’ll all live longer… so maybe we’ll work longer too, and it will be a wash.
I hope they’re here to stay.
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