Microsoft is giving salaried employees in the US a major perk, offering unlimited vacation under its new “Discretionary Time Off” policy.
Companies are trying to find a new normal post-pandemic, and Microsoft’s change to its vacation policy is being pitched as an adaptation to new, flexible ways of working. The company outlined its thinking in an internal email sent by Kathleen Hogan, Microsoft’s chief people officer, and seen by The Verge:
“How, when, and where we do our jobs has dramatically changed. And as we’ve transformed, modernizing our vacation policy to a more flexible model was a natural next step.”
The new policy goes into effect January 16 and will be in addition to the paid holidays Microsoft already provides. As an added benefit, the policy will also apply to new employees, meaning they will not need to be at the company a certain amount of time in order to build up vacation days.
Those employees that have already accumulated unused vacation days will get a one-time payout in April.
While hourly employees are not included in the new policy, Microsoft says the reason is because of the complexity of US federal and state laws, which would make it difficult to extend the policy to include them. The same is true for employees outside the US.