London - There is a revolutionary new holiday policy at Virgin, meaning that there is now no holiday policy at all.
Fun-loving boss Sir Richard Branson has told his Virgin staff on both sides of the Atlantic that they can now have as many holidays as they like.
Go on, go for it. Take as much time off as you want, kiddos, for as long as you want. No need to ask for permission. Here’s your bucket and spade. Close the door behind you.
In his new book on leadership, The Virgin Way, Branson reveals it was his daughter Holly who drew his attention to this unconventional plan. She’d read about a similar operation at the TV streaming firm Netflix, which had apparently boosted productivity and morale.
She urged her father to adopt the scheme. “I believe it would be a very Virgin thing to do,” she said.
Anti-establishment, hippy-dippy Dad agreed, and has deployed the free-form strategy - or flexi-time max, as I like to call it - ever since.
It works like this. Instead of being given the usual allocation of annual leave, it is left to the employee alone to decide if and when he or she feels like taking a few hours, a day, a week, a month off.
The assumption is that each individual knows whether their work is up to date and that their absence will not in any way damage the business.
“Or, for that matter, their careers!” Branson adds, in what is a rather ominous aside. Especially for any wage slave who worries about a career and a future and clawing their way up the ladder.
It is also, perhaps, a glimpse of a despot’s claw inside the velvet glove of his conspicuous libertarianism. For instead of heralding a jolly workers’ revolution, surely this is a system that works on fear rather than freedom?
In the current economic climate, not many of us would be confident enough to take extra time off work, even if we deserved it.
What millionaires like Sir Richard fail to grasp is that those lucky enough to have jobs are clinging on like barnacles, not plotting extra skiing weekends and childcare mornings. For deep in the jungle of office politics, the only thing worse than being missed is not being missed.
One can see that the scheme might work, but only for an elite; specifically those pampered execs who work in the creative industries in mid to upper-level management tiers.
Indeed, so far only Branson’s personal staff of 170 qualify. But I can’t imagine that, say, Virgin train drivers or Virgin pilots will be allowed to sign up to the scheme any time soon, can you?
“Announcement. This Virgin flight has been delayed for ten hours because the captain is on his fourth mai tai in a bar in Bora Bora. He just felt like a break, bless him.”
And it could not work for those further down the ranks in the workplace, on whom others depend. Those who work on factory floors, in hospitals, on the night shift, in a restaurant kitchen, in a school or a shop. People who have to be somewhere at an appointed time and cannot let others down.
In his new book, Branson also airily advises people to “delegate and spend more time with your family”. We’d all love to, Richard - but few of us can. Despite being such a successful businessman, his hatred of structure and rules, not to mention his wilful anti-establishment values, often give him a faint grasp of the realities of the workplace. And I should know, given that I used to work for him.
This holiday lark is just the sort of thing Branson loves to promote; a grand gesture that polishes his maverick credentials and also makes him seem a kindly employer in charge of a liberated workforce.
Nothing could be further from the truth. From my experience, Virgin employees were just as stressed out and worried as everyone else.
Branson started the Virgin Group in 1970 and today employs more than 50 000 people around the world.
In the early Eighties, I was employed at his record company in West London, a place where the mood was so laid back that everyone was completely outraged when we were told we could not look Bryan Ferry in the eye and had to call him ‘Mr Ferry’. Imagine!
One senior woman used to bring her baby to work, a sweet little peanut who hung from a door bouncer for most of the day. It was unthinkable anywhere else, but not at groovy Virgin, even if the tot was a distraction for the rest of us.
Then, as now, Branson was curiously insubstantial in person, but he had a genius for surrounding himself with fantastic executives.
I don’t mean lowly me, but the clever and committed men and women who helped turn his little mail-order record company into the global success it is today, covering telecoms, travel and financial services. And they didn’t do that by bunking off whenever possible.
The free holiday time is supposed to boost morale, creativity and productivity, with the focus being on what people get done, not how long they spend at their desk.
Yet in the modern world, everyone is perma-hooked up on smartphones and tablets anyway. We never really leave our offices - or worries - behind. Underlings never have to make difficult decisions because the boss is only ever a click away, while no one ever really mentally escapes.
Flexi-max might mean no more nine-to-five or chaotic rush-hour commute, but Branson has not factored in selfish colleagues or the fraught nature of office politics.
Taking all the time off you want? Who would ever dare?
We might end up as a nation of Coleen Rooneys, bouncing from holiday to holiday like an aimless beach ball, with a year-round Dubai tan but not a thought in our silly heads.
No thanks.
Daily Mail