An American company has revolutionised its holiday policy – by not having a holiday policy at all. But could this work for your business too?

Formed in 1997, Netflix started with the traditional leave and holiday policy that nearly all workplaces continue to offer today, with a standard number of days of leave per year, in return for working a standard number of hours each week.

But when employees regularly started to work after hours and sometimes on weekends, Netflix decided to do something radical and completely abolish its leave and holiday policy.

As Netflix’s ‘Reference Guide on Freedom & Responsibility Culture’ states, “we should focus on what people get done, not how many hours or days [are] worked”.

So Netflix employees can take as much time off as they want, for as long as they want, with an important proviso – that their managers know where they are, and their work needs to be completed.

The policy seems to have been an unqualified success – Netflix’s annual revenue now tops $US1.5 billion and profit is over $US100million. They plan to expand into Canada later this year.

“Rules and policies and regulations and stipulations are innovation killers. People do their best work when they’re unencumbered,” Netflix’s Steve Swasey told the UK Telegraph. “If you’re spending a lot of time accounting for the time you’re spending, that’s time you’re not innovating.”

Could such a policy, or rather a lack of policy, work for your company? Netflix decides to balance its holiday plan with a stated aim to only hire “outstanding employees”, essentially re-hiring each employee each year based on performance, and paying only top-of-market salaries. They expect exceptional output in exchange for the extra time off. They also have a large employee base to cover workers on holiday, with more than 600 paid staff.

It’s not an idea that could be uniformly applied across the business community, but this type of innovation is interesting, industrial laws not withstanding?

Could abolishing your leave and holiday policy potentially work for your business? Let us know your thoughts at the VECCI Blog. Also, for news and headline updates follow us on Twitter.