Shashank Nizam

It was just so alien that I thought, this is something I definitely need to implement and try out.

I don't think they had taken a time off in the longest time possible.

We're going to try something new.

So he made an announcement.

Everyone's going to take a week off every seven weeks.

So we actually added a stick to it as well from day one.

Yes, on their week off, we will punish you if you are working.

You lose a week's worth of pay.

Wow, that's very serious.

If you reply to any email, WhatsApp, or Slack message internally or to a client, your pay will be docked for the week.

We started with an unlimited vacation policy and it worked very well for certain employees, let's say in Europe, who would definitely take that up.

But then for the other half of the company, which was not in Europe or North America, that was a bit of a challenge because some like me and some staff in Singapore or India, we just never took time off.

There was an employee in Spain.

who was giving us a lesson, a masterclass in taking vacations.

He was off every week in April.

In the summer, he's off for his birthday week.

And then he's definitely off for Christmas to see his grandmother.

Growing up in Singapore, this was unheard of.

Singapore is polar opposite end of the siesta lifestyle in Spain.

So this was new.

This was surprising.

But I have to admit, I...

Learn to respect him for holding his boundaries and showing the team why vacations are important to begin with.

And in the end, it allowed me to rethink my own paradigm.

Work is all about work, work, work, work, work, which I'm sure a lot of people listening, let's say from Singapore or New York or even London would relate to.

Whereas Marco showed us this can be holistic.

And I was not in a position, business-wise, personally, to take a whole year off at that time.

But that was the light bulb moment.

hey, even if we can't take one year off every seven years, what if we take a week off every seven weeks?

And that's where it struck, huh, okay, let's do this.

If we have these short bursts of vacation throughout the year, you're always recharged and happy at work.

It's like a rocket trying to leave the Earth's atmosphere with those little boosters at different stages rather than just trying to burn one big piece of rocket.

Every seven weeks was a bit too often for a small team.

Like people were just in and out, in and out.

And they were taking weeks off back to back from each other.

And that did not allow for transitions to happen within the team.

And that was a bigger challenge because we were not a very large company.

There were not a lot of systems and processes.

A lot of things were based off on our daily stand-up call, which we did every morning for 30 minutes.

So imagine if, Adam, you are my manager and you're off one week and you come back and I'm off that week.

There is no handover.

And then by the time it's the week after and someone else is off,

So we made a few changes in that first iteration.

That was very, very important.

And then we learned from it.

And since then, the policy has stayed the same.

It's been more than five years now we've been doing this.

I feel the purpose of this week off is to let your guard down, is to try something new, which is energy giving and not necessarily energy draining.

It is my responsibility to ensure our business survives.

Our business can only survive and thrive if the employees are themselves thriving.

And thriving needs to be holistic, which can only come if they are taking regular time off.

And I would rather have a

Happy employee working on a task that is slightly delayed than a completely exhausted employee delivering on time.

We did a statistical analysis after our first few week offs and we learned that productivity, creativity and employee happiness were all up significantly.

I used to have this guy.

He loved sitting in numbers and being in Excel.

And he comes back from his week off.

I don't know what he did or what he didn't do that week.

And here he is in client brainstorm sessions, giving the best ideas in the room.

And I'm just looking at him.

People were coming back and participating in meetings like they had not previously.

And we see this uptick in general in employee happiness.

Like, you know, if I ask them, how happy are you after the week off?

You can see the smiles.

You can see, oh, you know, I'm an 8 out of 10 or 9 out of 10 today rather than completely burnt out and exhausted.

And here at Simply Flying, because different people are taking different times off at different times of the year, everyone is bringing back a different type of energy, a positively different type of energy, which is needed on a constant basis.

Someone just had a week off a week ago and they come back fully refreshed.

rejuvenated and happy to continue to work.

And that affects the mood of every single person in the team, which I do not think can be achieved if you're taking two to three weeks off a year or you're taking six weeks off in the middle of the year.

I truly believe this can be implemented by any company with less than 100 employees.

And you can implement this by staggering the week-offs, ensuring that everyone has great visibility on who is off which week.

I need to know seven weeks out when you will be off.

So, for example, for my staff, I know six months in advance when someone is going to be off.

The clients know months in advance and weeks in advance when someone will be off.

So, first, transparency is key.

Second...

You don't have to implement the model exactly like we are doing it.

Please iterate based on your organization.

Absolutely.

And you will see impacts and results that I may not have seen.

I have seen certain results in my employees and in my company, and larger organizations might see completely different results.