Netflix recruiter said boss made him use more vacation days

Many American workers don’t take all their vacation
days. Mike Jones is not pictured.
Shutterstock

• Many American workers don’t use all their paid vacation days,
  if they are granted vacation days at all.
• Two Netflix recruiters revealed on the podcast “We Are
  Netflix” that at their company, employees are often encouraged to
  take more vacation if they’ve been in the office too long.
• Netflix is one of a growing number of companies to offer
  unlimited vacation for workers.
• Netflix not only offers unlimited vacation, but encourages
  employees to make sure they use what they need, decoupling
  productivity from time in the office. Their approach shows that
  face time doesn’t always equal results.

In many American workplaces,
employees feel pressured to not use their vacation days.

Apparently that isn’t the case at Netflix, according to one
employee’s account.

Netflix recruiter Mike Jones recently revealed on the company’s
podcast “We
Are Netflix” that in 2017, between the time he was hired and
officially started working there, his superiors were already
encouraging him to take time off.

“I attended a Netflix happy hour prior to coming on board, and
[recruiter Chrissy Running] asked at some point, ‘You know, what
vacations do you have planned?'” Jones said on the
podcast. “And I was like, ‘Uh, I’m not a big vacation guy, I
typically take a day or two off here.'”

“And the stare that I got from her, I felt like reached down into
my soul,” he said.  “She said, ‘Hey, if you don’t start
taking more vacations we’re going to have some one-on-ones about
this.”

Netflix is one of an increasing number of companies that
doesn’t track how many vacation days its employees use. For
Jones, the interaction was one that set his career at the company
off right.

“It was great because it really encourages you to take time to
recharge. I definitely appreciated it, and it was a story that I
told family and coworkers,” he said. “She just threatened me to
take more vacation or else we’re going to have issues!”

It didn’t end there. Jones said he recently had a one-on-meeting
with another team member who took it a step further.

“She said, ‘So you’ve got to stop taking these three-day or
one-day-and-then-weekend vacations.’ She’s like, ‘When are you
going to take two weeks off?'” he said. “We literally sat down
and looked through my calendar and said, ‘All right, this is
probably the week you should go do it.'”

The attitude stands in contrast to most other US companies.
According to the careers website Glassdoor, the average American
worker who gets paid vacation days
only uses 54% of those days over the course of a year. Many
workers said they feared they’d fall too far behind on work if
they used their full slate of vacation days — something
only 23% of workers do.

But Running said on the podcast that Netflix’s approach comes
from the top down.

“We all know those people who never take vacations and then it
can spiral,” she said. “It can become where everyone thinks, oh,
because the senior recruiter or the senior manager doesn’t take
vacation, it means I can’t take vacation.” 

“Netflix philosophy is essentially, we’re not tracking how many
hours you spend in the office or that you spend answering emails,
and so we’re not going to track the time that you spend on
vacation,” she said. “And I think it’s not only important for
Mike to recharge and for myself to recharge, but the example that
it sends to everyone else.”