Employees in the United Kingdom are entitled to 28 days’ paid annual leave each year (in the case of a five-day week). However, inspired by firms like Netflix in the United States, more and more companies in the UK are offering their staff an unlimited holiday policy. Contributor Joblift.
This flexible approach to annual leave has been a contentious issue with many suggesting that employees actually end up worse off, with less paid vacation days taken than before. With this in mind, job search platform Joblift has analysed the unlimited holiday trend in the 19 million job vacancies published in the last 24 months. The UK leads the way in terms of the number of vacancies offering this perk – in comparison to Germany, France and the Netherlands – but are not increasing at a competitive rate.
5,359 vacancies offering unlimited annual leave have been published in the UK in the last two years. These job postings have increased by an average of 5% each month – more than double the 2% average increase in the UK’s job market as a whole. Despite worries around how beneficial unlimited holiday policy is to employees, there has been a huge increase in the number of people searching for these roles. Joblift has determined that there has been a 26% monthly increase in the number of people in Britain searching Google for jobs offering unlimited holiday. This shows that the increase in demand for vacancies with unlimited holiday is outweighing the increase in supply, suggesting more employees should perhaps adopt this policy.
The UK was by far the more advanced when it came to the number of job vacancies offering unlimited holiday, in comparison to Germany, France, and the Netherlands. The Netherlands advertised 360 vacancies offering the flexible working perk, while Germany offered 341, 16 times less than the UK. France lagged behind with just 188 jobs offering an unlimited holiday policy.
Joblift compared the vacancies with unlimited leave with postings advertising an above minimum (28 days’) set amount of paid leave. 391,035 vacancies advertising more than 28 days’ holiday were published in the UK in the last 24 months – almost 73 times more than the unlimited holiday vacancies – and these vacancies increased by 3% monthly on average. It was also seemingly easier to fill the job postings which advertised more than 28 days’ holiday. These vacancies stayed online for an average of 32 days before being filled, nine days less than the average for unlimited vacation jobs.
Developers and Programmers are the most popular jobs which offer unlimited holiday as a perk, followed by Recruitment Advisors, and Sales Managers. In terms of salaries, unlimited holiday vacancies offered a more substantial pay packet. Of the 2,596 vacancies that stated a salary, the average salary was £42,542, more than £10,000 more than the average salary of £31,752 for the 274,025 vacancies (with more than 28 days’ holiday) that stated a salary.
