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Now, should employees be allowed to take as muchholiday as they like? And it's an idea championed byBritish billionaire entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson,head of the Virgin Group. He is allowing some of hispersonal staff to take all the holiday they want withno questions asked. It isn't a new concept, but it isone that's gaining popularity around the world. Andit's meant to boost morale, creativity, productivityand workers' loyalty to the employers.
Occasionally, somebody will take a longer period of time, for example, if they've got ahoneymoon or a special occasion.
So they are paid for work. They are not paid for not working. If they were to take off threemonths in a year, they wouldn't earn as much as if they were doing the full 11 months and justtaking off a month.
They are paid as normal employees. So they are paid for whole time whether they are here ornot. The reality is nobody's ever taken any more than three and a half weeks. And those wereboth for honeymoons.
But isn't there resentment amongst the others who would say "I'm working harder than them.And look! They are all off".
I think the reality is people are more cooperative in the situation.
Don't you have accountants who say "This just isn't right. You've got to add it up".
It genuinely hasn't cause to any problem at all. It's one of the policies that we put in when wefirst set the company up nine years ago. And it's one of the policies that people said to me “Oh,you can do that while you are smaller. When you get bigger, you'll stop”. And we so far havehad no need to do that and have had no problem with it. We've only seen benefits.
And does it created different atmosphere in the company? What do you think?
I mean, it's one of many things. Something is really important that company share goals andpeople have shared purpose. You know, we have profit share schemes as well. So it's one ofmany things that just makes people feel much more plunged into the company, much more partof the company. We've got very low absentee.
I guess yours is a company where people turn up in the morning and they go away in theevening. They might work late because they are on a particular project. If you were running afactory, turning out machines, cars, for example, would it work then, do you think?
I couldn't really answer in terms of shift work because that's not something I‘ve had personalexperience. So…… But I do think in service industries now, people are expected to work verylong hours. You know, there is a lot of late nights. There's weekends if we have customerscontacting us. We have customers contacting us in the evenings or some days or whatever. Wehave to respond to that. We choose to respond to that. 【不要走开,精彩内容请看下一页】