And in this system, it is common courtesy to make effort to make sure your team has as few problems as possible from your absence. Of course it is also common courtesy that you are not contact for anything work related during your vacation time.
Over here in Germany where everybody has at least 3 weeks paid time off (being ill does not count to this contingent btw), it is common that leaves are planned in the beginning of the year for larger vacations, so there are no collisions.
Also, if you have children you have priority during school breaks for paied leaves.
This concept could be copied by us employers also, I wonder why not? Maybe because this way you can pressure your employees with your vacation as leverage
And in this system, it is common courtesy to make effort to make sure your team has as few problems as possible from your absence. Of course it is also common courtesy that you are not contact for anything work related during your vacation time.
All of this is possible in North America, but you need a union job.
My day-job is a unionionized Managed Services gig subsidiary of a larger company. The rest of the company fits a stereotype we see in the deLoittes and IBM Pro Servs of the world, but the union contract gives us a sane bit of breathing room:
9x9 ‘compressed’ time so you get one day off each week regardless
statutory holidays are sacred
OT for weekend work, but it quickly goes double-time so it’s rare; and holidays are 2.5x quickly
standby time is paid. Call-outs are paid.
mandated remote work capability. It’s in the union contract, guys, so we can Work From Home Office or Work From HQ as best suits us
The combo of compressed time, stats and careful placement of my 21 vacation days this year will give me 7 carefully-placed weeks off; it’s not contiguous, but it’s really great.
In the Netherlands we have laws in place to ensure what is called “good employership” and “good employeeship”. It’s basically the minimum of what you should expect from each other in matters of courtesy. Good employership as a minimum states an employer should be thoroughly, not abuse his powers as an employer, substantiate big decisions regarding employees, live up to expectations, treat all employees equal and provide good insurance.
Good employeeship is seen as being at work at agreed upon times (this includes taking PTO), doing suitable work, being honest, loyalty to a certain degree like not starting a company without consultation and “stealing” work from the employer, and descretion/secrecy regarding company sensitive information.
It’s all very general, and most of the time further explained either in additional laws or in a “CAO”, a collective working conditions agreement which is reviewed periodically with the unions (about 70-75% of employees have such an agreement).
if my compensation includes paid time off, I am taking it. my notifications are not requests when the date is weeks or months out. it is informational only.
i do not and never have accepted blackout day etc.
i’m honest with this during the hiring process and it’s, honestly, worked out just fine. especially if you frame it as a part of forward thinking communication and the manager is trying to pretend they know what they are doing.
If communicated and part of the deal, great. I personally think that an employment benefits both parties. And with the mentioned curtisyz that works well.
For example, I leave early for appointments, in the last weeks we had some troubles, so dinner for the hole family was on the employer, a while week of takeouts.
So, if my employer tells me that my vacation colides with a project, I am certain that he checked every possibility, and we try to find solutions, like interruptijg the vacation for a day and taking part in meetings from my hotel room.
And if I can not trust my employer enough, then I move on. I am in the lucky position that the stuff I do, most people can’t.
And in this system, it is common courtesy to make effort to make sure your team has as few problems as possible from your absence. Of course it is also common courtesy that you are not contact for anything work related during your vacation time.
All of this is possible in North America, but you need a union job.
My day-job is a unionionized Managed Services gig subsidiary of a larger company. The rest of the company fits a stereotype we see in the deLoittes and IBM Pro Servs of the world, but the union contract gives us a sane bit of breathing room:
The combo of compressed time, stats and careful placement of my 21 vacation days this year will give me 7 carefully-placed weeks off; it’s not contiguous, but it’s really great.
Can you explain 9x9 to me? That’s confusing. 24x7, 8x5 yeah. But you can’t mean that notation? Or did the US finally change to a 10 day week?
9 working hours, 9 days. you hit 80 hours in nine days, so the tenth day you get off. basically an extra day off every other week
This is exactly what seems to be missing in the US: courtesy.
A system that gives everyone entitled leave means better employees and less downtime due to leave (surprise surprise, courtesy leads to coordination).
Shockingly this leads to people caring about their team mates, and things aren’t zero sum anymore.
In the Netherlands we have laws in place to ensure what is called “good employership” and “good employeeship”. It’s basically the minimum of what you should expect from each other in matters of courtesy. Good employership as a minimum states an employer should be thoroughly, not abuse his powers as an employer, substantiate big decisions regarding employees, live up to expectations, treat all employees equal and provide good insurance.
Good employeeship is seen as being at work at agreed upon times (this includes taking PTO), doing suitable work, being honest, loyalty to a certain degree like not starting a company without consultation and “stealing” work from the employer, and descretion/secrecy regarding company sensitive information.
It’s all very general, and most of the time further explained either in additional laws or in a “CAO”, a collective working conditions agreement which is reviewed periodically with the unions (about 70-75% of employees have such an agreement).
if my compensation includes paid time off, I am taking it. my notifications are not requests when the date is weeks or months out. it is informational only.
i do not and never have accepted blackout day etc.
i’m honest with this during the hiring process and it’s, honestly, worked out just fine. especially if you frame it as a part of forward thinking communication and the manager is trying to pretend they know what they are doing.
If communicated and part of the deal, great. I personally think that an employment benefits both parties. And with the mentioned curtisyz that works well.
For example, I leave early for appointments, in the last weeks we had some troubles, so dinner for the hole family was on the employer, a while week of takeouts.
So, if my employer tells me that my vacation colides with a project, I am certain that he checked every possibility, and we try to find solutions, like interruptijg the vacation for a day and taking part in meetings from my hotel room.
And if I can not trust my employer enough, then I move on. I am in the lucky position that the stuff I do, most people can’t.
But it’s also known that for example august is a slow month so you are not expecting a full workforce.
Yeah but courtesy is running dry as of late :(