The 170 staff working at the head office of Virgin Group will have something to be happy about – they can take as much holidays as they want provided that it will not cause damage to the business. Sir Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Group implemented such policy.
Sir Richard said this statement through his website, “Flexible working has revolutionised how, where and when we all do our jobs”. He continued, “So if working nine to five no longer applies, then why should strict annual leave (vacation) policies?”
He stated that he got the inspiration from Netflix whose business is into video streaming. The said company has the policy of not tracking the holidays of its staff. It was even reported that the moral, productivity and creativity of the staff increases ever since the policy took effect.
The new policy is going to be implemented to a total of 170 staff of Virgin Group, its head offices located in both the US and UK. Overall, Virgin Group is employing a total of 50,000 in the fields of banking, technology, aviation, and transport. However, they are not going to adopt the same policy as of yet.
Sir Richard said that if all goes well as he expected, he will encourage having the policy be implemented to all of its subsidiaries.
This bold move of the billionaire founder has been criticized by some of employment experts. They see it as a form of publicity stunt to promote his upcoming book. There is even a question whether or not the policy is applicable train drivers, airline staff and pilots. However, there are other social media users who admired this move of Sir Richard. This would lead to employees a much higher level of loyalty and trust.
