Revealed: What job-seekers now want more than anything

Job roles offering unlimited holiday are in high demand, but companies are failing to keep up. Photo / 123RF

Flexible hours and remote working are workplace trends that have boomed over the past few years, as companies try desperately to lure new talent and retain their best staff amid a skills shortage in Britain.

But a new employee benefit has spread from Silicon Valley to the UK, and job-seekers are now looking for it more than ever: unlimited holidays, reports the Telegraph.

Online streaming service Netflix started the trend in 2004, when it quietly pioneered an alternative approach to the standard holiday allowance by giving American employees the option to take as many holiday days as they liked – provided their managers knew where they were and that their work was covered.

Other tech start-ups soon followed suit, attracting swathes of employees desperate for the chance to have limitless vacation days. The US is the only major advanced economy in the world where there is no statutory minimum paid vacation or paid public holidays.

Although the perk is controversial among employers, it doesn't seem to have hurt the companies offering it. Netflix now has 125 million subscribers globally, and has continued to grow despite hiking prices for most of its customers late last year. Its revenue for the year to April was up 40 per cent, to US$3.7 billion ($5.2b).

Social networking site LinkedIn, which adopted an unlimited holiday policy in 2015, saw revenues climb 9 per cent last year, to US$27.4b.

Of course, the soaring success of these tech companies can't be attributed purely to their work policies, but firms that offer flexible holidays, among other employee benefits, argue that it enables them to attract and retain the best talent, which is a significant factor in a company's success.

This ultra-flexible approach to holiday time is now being embraced by some companies in the UK, and demand for the perk is increasing. Jobs site Joblift.co.uk analysed Google trends and found a 26 per cent monthly increase in the number of people in Britain searching for positions offering unlimited annual leave.

But demand is outweighing supply and most businesses are failing to make their holiday policies more flexible. Joblift's data showed only a 5 per cent month-on-month increase in the number of roles being offered with unlimited holiday on its site, which holds 19 million listings.

Employees in the UK are entitled to 28 days' paid annual leave, including bank holidays, if they work a traditional five-day week.

The UK leads the way in Europe in terms of the number of businesses offering the perk, with 5359 vacancies offering unlimited annual leave published in Britain over the past two years compared to Germany's 341, France's 188 and the Netherlands' 360. But the roles are not increasing at a competitive rate.

Many firms that have adopted a flexible approach to holidays champion the idea of giving their employees more freedom in the workplace, saying it boosts productivity and improves work-life balance, helping staff retention.

In 2014, Sir Richard Branson removed limits on the amount of holiday Virgin employees can take each year in the hope it would boost morale, creativity and productivity.

Productivity in the UK lags behind the rest of Europe: British workers take five days to produce what other European workers achieve in four. Could unlimited holidays go some way to bridge the gap?

'Offering unlimited holidays helps us to attract and retain top talent'

Digital marketing agency Visualsoft has offered unlimited holidays to staff for the past three years. Each member of the team is set Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) by their line manager which, if achieved, means they can take as many holidays as they like on top of the 20 days' statutory allowance.

David Duke, the company's chief operating officer, says the scheme is successful because it has created a working culture with "trustworthy staff who focus on delivering brilliant and innovative solutions and high service levels to customers, rather than staff who appear to work hard but do not deliver".

Drew Benvie, founder of social media consultancy Battenhall, has offered his team unlimited holiday for the past five years, and says it has helped to retain and attract staff in the UK and internationally.

"Perks that attract hard-to-find specialists and keep them engaged for longer pay off in droves, and unlimited holiday has to be one of our most successful company perks to date," he says.

Architectural practice Leonard Design Architects has offered its staff unlimited paid holidays for the past two years. "We have an extremely dedicated and hard-working team that often go above and beyond to meet tight client deadlines, so why wouldn't we trust them to manage their leave?" said director John Morgan.

The only rule is that staff find three people who will be in the office while they're away to answer any client questions or problems. Morgan says the company won't go back to the "subservient way" staff have get sign-off to take holidays, and instead would continue "trusting our team not to abuse the system".

He adds: "It has empowered our people, improved communication and transformed the culture of our practice."

Offering bottomless holiday deals doesn't work for all businesses, however, claims Marianne Page, who works with business owners to scale up their companies.

'Unlimited holidays can make staff feel guilty about taking time off'

"Unlimited holiday rarely manifests as such, with the implied guilt of 'letting the company down' or 'damaging your career' overriding the perceived outcome of staff sunning themselves across the other side of the world for a month without a care for their team. It may, in fact, reduce the amount of time taken off because of that underlying guilt."

Richard Stone, managing director at PR firm Stone Junction, agrees. He says the company voted on whether to offer unlimited holidays in 2016, but staff turned the idea down. "The team thought that an unlimited holiday allocation would discourage them from actually taking the holiday and would instead encourage a culture of presenteeism."