Balancing act

Like many employees across the city, 23-year-old Stacy Sendler is beginning to map out her summer travel plans. But unlike the vast majority of office-goers, the Midtown East resident isn’t budgeting out precious vacation days as she contemplates a week-long jaunt to Rome in July.

That’s because ZocDoc, the SoHo-based online medical appointment Web site where she works as a publicist, offers its employees unlimited paid time off — a perk that’s growing in popularity, especially among tech start-ups.

The policy, which generally includes vacation, personal and sick days, entrusts employees to decide if and when they can take time off, instead of holding them to a set number of days or an accrual system based on tenure.

“It’s given me freedom,” says Sendler, who’s taken off a total of eight weeks of paid time since she started at the company in the fall of 2011. “Whenever there’s a really incredible opportunity” — like visiting an old friend in Italy this summer — “I’ll never have regrets of not being able to jump in it.”

Although a 2012 survey by the Society of Human Resources estimates that only 1 percent of businesses nationwide currently offer such a policy, those that do — including Gilt Groupe, Netflix and Fab.com — report it can be a win-win for employees and employers alike.

At ZocDoc, the policy is an extension of one of the company’s core values of “acting like an owner of the company, and using your personal time like you would use the company’s time,” says Karsten Vagner, the company’s director of people. The company has offered unlimited vacation time — which applies to any day, and is never tracked — since its founding in 2007.

And while the generous perk has been “a great recruiting tool,” Vagner says it also boosts morale among employees.

“People feel empowered when they know their company trusts them,” he says.

Sendler says when she first heard about the policy, it sounded “too good to be true.” But just two months into her new job she experienced the perk firsthand, when colleagues encouraged her to attend a five-day family reunion in Arizona that she hadn’t dreamed of being able to take off for.

“That kind of set the tone,” says Sendler. “I realized that as long as you get your work done, the company trusts you to decide for yourself how you’ll work.”

Now, Sendler has no qualms about taking time off: This year alone, she’s taken a two-week break in the Bahamas, a trip to New Orleans for the Super Bowl and time for a minor medical procedure.

But it’s not a free-for-all: Staff members are required to give their managers as much notice as possible, are expected to check with their team and the company calendar to make sure they’re not skipping town at an inopportune time, and to arrange for proper coverage before departing.

“No one minds having to pick up any of the extra work, because they know they’ll reciprocate,” she says, noting that in the weeks before she left for the islands, she covered for one co-worker’s trip to Taiwan and another’s to China.

And when it’s her turn to ditch her cubicle for an adventure, Sendler says support from the office, coupled with a bit of extra prep before, allows her to fully unplug — and not even check her phone.

“It’s definitely encouraged that if you’re taking that time off, to really enjoy it,” she says.

That is a key part of the policy, says Vagner. “We want people to have that kind of balance,” he says. “People come back happier, more revitalized, refreshed and ready to attack their work.”

He says the company’s yet to have issues with employees exploiting or abusing the policy, which places no limits on the amount of time employees take off if it’s not impacting their work: “We’ve found that when you hire adults and treat them like adults, they act like adults.”

But this sort of dynamic isn’t feasible for every business, notes HR consultant Carol Harnett. She says only companies with an entrepreneurial and result-oriented environment — as opposed to ones that value face time or revolve around rote work — can successfully support a flexible vacation plan.

“If you aren’t being held to clear objectives — and lots of people aren’t — it’s foolish for an employer to even go down this road right now,” she says. “Unlimited paid time off works well when people know what they’re supposed to accomplish, and what their team is supposed to accomplish, and they’re held to results.”

Executives at Birchbox, the Flatiron District-based beauty subscription service, instituted an unlimited vacation policy in 2011, after realizing that output — like reaching quarterly sales and sign-up goals — “was more important to us than how many hours you are sitting at your desk,” says Nicole Fealey, the company’s manager of people and culture.

Although the response has been “overwhelmingly positive” from the get-go, Fealey says that some of the 125 employees at the startup still need to be reminded to “take time off to recharge.” (She sends quarterly reminders to managers asking to encourage their teams to do so.)

At the SoHo offices of the design firm IDEO, employees take off an average of roughly four weeks a year. The company adopted an unlimited policy in early 2012 when they decided a traditional vacation accrual plan didn’t reflect the reality of employees’ long, irregular hours and frequent travel.

“One of the ways people are using it is to take a few days off between projects, as a way to have a little breathing room,” says partner Duane Bray.

The new system has given him the flexibility to spend more time with his family over the holidays and enjoy a proper summer vacation, instead of having to choose between the two.

“You no longer have to manage the mental overhead of [wondering] ‘How am I budgeting that time? Am I going to go into a deficit, and get some automated e-mail telling me I’ve used up too many vacation hours?’ ” says Bray.

And in the company’s collaborative, team-based culture, he doesn’t have to worry about employees jetting off to Maui for a month, leaving their co-workers and clients hanging: “There’s a social contract that lives alongside [the policy],” he says. “If someone wanted to abuse it and take a lot of time off, the community would give feedback and help regulate that.”

HR consultant Xan Raskin, who has worked with clients with flexible vacation plans, says the key is to set clear expectations upfront — like how and when to arrange coverage — and also expressly state there is no payout for unused vacation if you leave the company.

“That can be a potential legal pitfall,” she notes.

If executed well, Raskins says the policy can even alleviate the administrative burden of tracking vacation and sick days.

“It’s so much extra work, especially for small companies who don’t have it automated, just to keep track of who is [and isn’t] coming in,” she says.

Then there’s the bonus of seriously appreciative workers like Arjun Anand, a senior software engineer at Crowdtap, a digital marketing startup in Union Square.

Thanks to the company’s unlimited time off plan, the Long Island City resident, 28, was able to take a whopping six consecutive weeks off for his 2011 wedding and honeymoon in India.

“Before I left, I made sure all of my deadlines were met, and everyone was prepared and aware of what I was doing,” says Anand, who checked in via e-mail.

The transition back to the grind was seamless, too: “We communicate so well that I got back into the flow of things pretty easily,” he says.

He has since traveled back to India for a couple weeks last year and is planning another big trip this summer.

“We work really hard when we’re in the office,” he says. “So I don’t feel so bad about taking time off.”