Sir Richard Branson

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grytters
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Sir Richard Branson

Post by grytters » Thu Sep 25, 2014 12:28 pm

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-29356627


On his website, he said that his staff of 170 could "take off whenever they want for as long as they want".

He added that there was no need to ask for approval, nor say when they planned to return, the assumption being that the absence would not damage the firm.
Sir Richard, at work, yesterday:

http://dilbert.com/dyn/str_strip/000000 ... p.zoom.gif
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RUMPLESTILTSKIN
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Re: Sir Richard Branson

Post by RUMPLESTILTSKIN » Fri Sep 26, 2014 10:08 am

grytters wrote:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-29356627


On his website, he said that his staff of 170 could "take off whenever they want for as long as they want".

He added that there was no need to ask for approval, nor say when they planned to return, the assumption being that the absence would not damage the firm.
Sir Richard, at work, yesterday:

http://dilbert.com/dyn/str_strip/000000 ... p.zoom.gif

There has to be a condition somewhere. Unpaid leave maybe???? Sir Dick isn't stupid, neither is he that good an employer, he likes to make money. He also liked to have his employers totally dedicated and prepared to work hard and long. I smell a large rodent.
Lack of his workers coming out and saying, great what a good idea.
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Spyman
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Re: Sir Richard Branson

Post by Spyman » Mon Sep 29, 2014 1:43 pm

RUMPLESTILTSKIN wrote:neither is he that good an employer, he likes to make money.
If you don't like to make money, you're not going to be much of an employer.
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Re: Sir Richard Branson

Post by PaulMJohnson » Tue Oct 14, 2014 9:39 pm

We have the same system at Netflix where I work (referenced in the article as being where Branson got the idea). Our vacation policy is "there is no policy or tracking". We realized that since we don't track how many hours per day people work, why do we need to track how many days per year they work?

The only thing that you need to track is, are they getting their work done, and is the work to a high enough standard.

What confuses me with Branson doing this is that the employment laws in the UK give a lot more protection to the employee, so it's much more difficult to get rid of a poor performer. Here, if someone isn't doing their job well enough, we get rid of them very quickly. In the UK, you'd have an employment tribunal.

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Re: Sir Richard Branson

Post by theoriginalfatcat » Tue Oct 14, 2014 9:56 pm

PaulMJohnson wrote:We realized that since we don't track how many hours per day people work, why do we need to track how many days per year they work?

The only thing that you need to track is, are they getting their work done, and is the work to a high enough standard.
Quite amazing! The permutations for organising your work schedule to suit your circumstances seem almost limitless.
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PaulMJohnson
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Re: Sir Richard Branson

Post by PaulMJohnson » Wed Oct 15, 2014 6:33 pm

theoriginalfatcat wrote:Quite amazing! The permutations for organising your work schedule to suit your circumstances seem almost limitless.
Yes, it is pretty cool. I have to say that even though people are free to work whenever they want, mostly people follow standard 9-5 office hours, since even with the great online video conferencing tools we have now, it's easier to collaborate when you're in the same building at the same time as someone else.

People are prone to taking much longer single vacations than I've seen before as well. It's not uncommon for people to take a month off in one stint (longest someone in my team went on holiday for was 7 weeks!), but they'll always have got done what they needed to get done beforehand, and they'll make sure their being gone for a long period isn't going to impact anyone else negatively, so it doesn't really matter.

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