Why Holidays Should Be Mandatory

https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20220520-the-smoke-and-mirrors-of-unlimited-paid-time-off

I think it was Robert Townsend in Up The Organization who said it; if not, then Gerald Weinberg in The Psychology of Computer Programming: "If a programmer is indispensable, fire the programmer".

Back in the good old days of computer programming (1968 to the current day) a programmer would write a payroll program, and that programmer would be the only person in the organization who knew how the payroll program worked.

Knowing how to write a payroll program was a transportable skill, and the programmer would be lured away to another firm for more money and prestige, and the original company would be stuck with an essential program that could not be modified.

I know this because in 1978 I spent four months at SGB(UK) upgrading their payroll program for the new tax laws coming into effect in April of that year. This was an expensive exercise for the union-ridden firm in part because it would take eight hours to load a spare copy of the database, eight hours to test the program, and eight hours to load the current database back in - a full twenty-four hours of machine-time for one test that may or may not work.

How can a company guard against the situation of having an indispensable employee at any level?

The answer is to simulate the resignation of each employee on an annual basis.

If employees are forced to take at least one cluster of five days off in a row each year, then at least some of the indispensable staff will be revealed. Ten days off would be better, as would fifteen days.

Manager, staff, and worker vacations are one way to ferret out the danger of having the future of the company's work force being dependant on one employee.

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