Kronos was founded to help organizations manage employees' time on the job with time clocks. Thus, it is ironic that it would later become a leader in the movement toward offering employees unlimited vacation time. Kronos Incorporated was founded in 1977 by an MIT graduate Mark Ain. Its first product was the first microprocessor-based time clock. The company went public in 1992 and continued to grow internationally as well as in size. In 2007 the company became a private-equity owned company rather than a publicly traded one. Its products are popular and widely used. In fact, Kronos shipped its one-millionth time clock in 2015. By 2020, Kronos surpassed 34,000 customers in the cloud, over 40,000 customers worldwide, and over 6,000 employees. Kronos employees had reason to rejoice in 2016 when the company joined a small, but growing, group of organizations such as Netflix, General Electric, and Virgin Group offering unlimited vacation policies (only about 6% of organizations offer such unlimited leave, according to SHRM). Kronos began investigating unlimited vacation policies as a way to attract top talent to the organization. This program, called myTime by Kronos includes no set limit on how many days an employee may take off. Instead of being allocated a specified number of vacation days, employees are asked to "work things out in consultation with their supervisors." Even what seems like potentially "good news" can be an upsetting change for some. Typically, 95% of employees prefer unlimited vacation, but for the remaining 5% it can be troubling. Kronos CEO Aron Ain notes that he was not prepared for the level of emotion and pushback this change might evoke. As you will read about organizational change, it is not surprising that some employees will fight a new system even when it sounds like good news. Key considerations for organizations considering such a change include the following:
• Making sure you have fundamental trust in the people who work for you.
• Considering re-investing savings associated with not paying out unused vacation time into other employee benefits. • Considering ways to reward more senior employees who worked decades to accrue their considerable vacation time.
• Fostering ways to ensure that the organizational culture allows employees to take time off without guilt or fear of how it will look to upper management.
• Working with managers to ensure that the new policy does not become a burden on them.
• Tracking vacation use to understand trends and detect issues or unintended consequences.
• Communicating the goals and issues around discretionary time off to avoid problems. Kronos did a number of things to work through such concerns. It paired the addition of unlimited vacation days with other benefits such as increased maternity leave, parental leave, and adoption leave, a higher 401(k) match, scholarships for employees' children, and a child care assistance program as well as contributing up to $500 a year to help employees with their student loans. It tracked how much vacation was being used to see if the program was working. It listened to employee concerns and provided training and coaching as well as HR support for employees with questions. While the long-term results of the new policy remain unclear or unknown, the company's recent track record of success, including being named one of the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For as well as reporting record profits in 2019, indicates that Kronos' focus on employee wellbeing is paying off.[70] Multimedia Extension: Making Unlimited Vacation Time Work Podcast https://hbr.org/ideacast/2017/12/making-unlimited-vacation-time-work.

Questions

1. What do you see as the pros and cons of an unlimited vacation policy?
2. Do you think the pros and cons change depending on the organization? Why or why not?
3. Thinking about different industries, which do you think are the most suited for this type of policy? Which might be less suited? Please explain your rationale for each.
4. Were you surprised that some employees objected to this change? What organizational behavior principles, that you learned about this term, might explain their reactions?
5. Imagine you are a change management consultant. What advice might you give to an organization considering making a change like Kronos did to an unlimited vacation policy?