Treating Days Off As A Reward, Not Just As Holiday 

To celebrate International Women’s Day 2021 we’re shining a spotlight on the women in HR making a real impact on equality and happiness through a number of different initiatives. 

Anouk Agussol, CEO and Founder of Unleashed, tells us about why rewarding employees with random days off has a huge impact on morale, and ensures that everyone is able to enjoy a reward; because who doesn’t want a day off?!

Flexibility is a two-way street

One of my strongest beliefs is that people only do excellent work (which we want people to be doing) when they are feeling their best. And because people are all individuals and feel their best at different times and in different ways, it means that flexibility is the only 'one size fits all' approach to achieve this. But, flexibility is a two way street. It isn’t just us being flexible for the team to work when they thrive, but it is also the team working as needed when the business thrives. 

Closing the company on random days means that everyone rests

These two go hand in hand… that is why, when things are a bit tough - either super busy or a pandemic hits - we close the company on random days. 

Now, it's got to be said that we have unlimited leave and we ensure that people take at least 25 days + BH but, that isn’t the same as closing shop. When you close the business, people don’t worry about not being involved in making decisions, missing out on things, or anything similar. When you close up, everyone is off. 

Annually, we shut shop for two weeks over Christmas and New Year and we close on very random days for a day or half day here or there. 

When productivity and happiness take a hit, we try to address the route cause

We recognise that sometimes a weekend isn’t enough. That has definitely been the case recently. So given that everyone is so fed up with covid, with being locked down, with not seeing their family and friends, given that productivity and happiness is not where it should be in every business right now, we closed Unleashed last Friday. 

Tell you what, everyone felt amazing coming back to work on Monday!