Why we do it

We believe that the best person to know when you need some time off is...you! Nobody monitors how many hours per day you work, or how many hours you spent answering to e-mails after office hours. Why should we keep track of your days of vacation then?

So you don’t have to ask prior approval for your days off. We trust you that you will take the best decision in your own interest and in the interest of the company. And we definitely believe that it’s in the interest of the company to have employees with a fresh mind and high energy levels.

How does it work?

• Indicate as ‘yourfirstname OFF’ in the Google shared Team Calendar
• Also update your Slack status
• For employees, as we have to stick to the [Belgian] social system, we still need to keep an official register of days off. So don’t forget to put your days off in Officient too (they will be automatically accepted). This is mandatory.

Guidelines

Take plenty of time off 🧘

We know it can be hard to know what is acceptable or not when something is unlimited and it’s often something quite personal and subjective (yeah, we all went to the Pizza Hut all-you-can-eat buffet).

So to help you understand it and help you in your time-off decisions, here are a few guidelines:

You should take at least 25-days off each year (and we encourage more). A downside of having an unlimited time off policy is that often people take fewer days off than if there was a strict limit. This is an unintended consequence and we want to encourage the opposite — our policy is here to encourage more time off.

Enjoy a 1-day 'vacation' 📚

Need an extra day to re-charge, catch up on life admin, or heading on a staycay? 1-day 'vacations' are great too! You don't need to be doing something glamorous to justify having time off. We encourage you all to have at least one longer break a year (~2-weeks) but one way to benefit from having an unlimited allowance is to schedule shorter bursts of time off across the year, such as long weekends.

Coordinating and communicating time off 🗣️

<aside> ☝ Some teams, such as customer facing and support teams, have a greater imperative to coordinate their time off. Please be especially considerate of this and speak to your team about the required customer availability during busy time off periods, such as festive season and summer time.

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It's important to coordinate and communicate time off with your immediate team. You should aim to give as much notice as possible, especially for time off of 2-weeks or more. Follow these simple steps above (in “How does it work?”) to book time off.