The idea is that we have a responsible, deeply committed staff working on incredible causes and interesting challenges, and the new policy will help shape an experience here (and, to the point, not here) that enables them to reach their absolute highest level of impact on the important work we do together.
I’ve previously written here about our unique parental leave policy, which we’re very proud of, and which I can report back has made a real impact on the lives of our new moms and dads. I’ve also written about our efforts to mitigate gender imbalance in the creative and tech industries (latest count at BSD: 54% female, 46% male). Like those efforts, our new time off policy is one that we hope helps raise both productivity and happiness, while attracting the very best staff in the world.
I intended to write a post describing the mechanics of the new policy and our thinking behind it—but I can’t get away from the sense that unlike those other two initiatives, this change in how we do business doesn’t really reflect where the debate and the attention ought to be. So this post is going to take a different direction.
We’re lucky to be able to make a change like this, and we’ll report back about the results as we learn from the new policy and how it works in real life.
But the reality in America is that the availability of paid time-off varies widely (and shamefully) across industries and income levels, and the US ranks at the very bottom of the world on this front, guaranteeing literally zero days of paid leave—which allows for that abuse of the lowest-paid and least-organized working people.
That’s the kind of issue that gets us fired up, and which keeps our team of passionate experts at work so hard they often need a firm reminder to take some time off. My hope and belief is that our new policy will enable better planning, adequate time to recharge, and therefore more creativity and focus to help make even more progress on the causes we care about.
But as people in the creative and tech industries, we benefit from near-universal availability of paid time-off—which is nowhere near the norm. So if you’re reading this and you’ve ever had a paid day off, please make sure you’re registered to vote and do some volunteering for (or donating to) the good guys. That way someone else working just as hard as—or harder than—you can have one, too.
Joe Rospars is the Founder and CEO of Blue State Digital.