Workplace Democracy » employee engagement

Netflix takes a vacation from its vacation policy

workplacedemocracy — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 16:04:18 +0000

Contrary to most companies, the vacation policy at Netflix is quite simple: “there is no policy or tracking.” Netflix CEO Reed Hastings referred to vacation limits and face-time requirements as “a relic of the industrial age.”

Several years ago, employees had argued that it wasn’t logical for the company to track vacation days since employees’ hours worked per day or per week were not being tracked.

Netflix executives agreed and did away with vacation policy after the legal issues were taken care of. In a presentation that was leaked to the media, Neflix realized that they “should focus on what people get done, not how many hours or days worked. Just as we don’t have a 9-5 day policy, we don’t need a vacation policy.”

Netflix employees are encouraged to take as much vacation time as they want as long as it doesn’t interfere with their work.

To executives who might worry about such a policy vacuum being taken advantage of by employees, Brian Carney, the author of Freedom, Inc., responds “In a large enough organization, there might be a couple of people who would take two or three months’ vacation–but if a vacation policy is the only thing holding them back from that, they’re probably ‘vacationing’ at their desks anyway.”

An argument against ‘totalitarian’ IT policies

workplacedemocracy — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 12:14:37 +0000

In his Management 2.0 blog, Gary Hamel shares some thought-provoking questions about counterintuitive, yet common, IT policies that seem to discourage productivity and innovation:

How is it that companies are willing to trust employees with their customers, their expensive equipment, and their cash, but are unwilling to trust them when it comes to using the Web at work or loading their own programs onto their workplace PC?
Do IT staffers really believe that conscientious, committed employees turn into crazed, malicious, hackers when given a bit of freedom over their IT environment?
If leading edge IT tools are, as many claim, essential to unleashing human creativity, why would any company force all of its employees to use the same computers, phones and software programs?

Hamel recommends giving employees more freedom over their IT tools. We agree. One of the best ways to cultivate innovation and engagement is to empower people with the ability to decide how they can best do their jobs.

Michael Moore, ‘Capitalism: A Love Story’ and Workplace Democracy

workplacedemocracy — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 10:53:58 +0000

Capitalism: A Love Story, the 2009 documentary movie directed by Michael Moore, criticizes the current economic order in the United States and capitalism in general while covering the financial crisis of 2007–2009 and the recovery stimulus. In his movie, Moore highlights workplace democracy as an alternative model to capitalism.

Many would argue that workplace democracy should not be considered a replacement to the capitalist economic system. Instead, workplace democracy is a highly effective management strategy that helps enable companies to engage and motivate their employees and to maintain a competitive advantage in their industries.

Workplace democracy is not limited to a specific type of company ownership structure. Democratic companies come in all shapes and sizes and range from high tech start-up companies such as Brainpark, to small worker-owned cooperatives such as South Mountain, to large privately-held companies such as W.L. Gore and Associates, to large publicly-traded companies such as DaVita.

Workplace democracy is an innovative management strategy where company information and decision-making powers are shared and distributed among employees so that customer-facing workers (who are closest to customers and usually know them best) are aware of the company’s goals and performance and have the ability (and motivation) to make smart decisions quickly, which is essential in today’s fast-moving and hyper-competitive marketplace.

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