Does Mandatory Paid Time Off Actually Make a Difference? A Tech Founder Decided to Find Out. Vanessa Quigley, co-founder of consumer tech company Chatbooks and a mother of seven, wanted to build a workplace where all team members could perform at their best.
By Amanda Breen Edited by Jessica Thomas
Key Takeaways
- Vanessa Quigley realized her team was burnt-out during the pandemic.
- Chatbooks implemented a mandatory paid time off policy, totaling five weeks per year.
- Both employees and the company benefit from the policy and a remote-first approach.
Vanessa Quigley, co-founder of Utah-based consumer tech company Chatbooks, saw her team's mental health take a hit during the pandemic. As a mother of seven, she was all too familiar with the particular challenge of adjusting to remote work while raising a family.
So she decided to do something about it — and instated a mandatory paid time off policy.
"Our mission at Chatbooks is to strengthen families, and we wanted to make sure that our team was spending a solid amount of time away from work," Quigley tells BIZ Experiences. "To us, that means getting off of Slack and unstringing the bow."
Now, Chatbooks encourages employees to take a total of five weeks of PTO annually: one week off each quarter, plus a two-week company-wide vacation at the end of the year.
And the results? Perhaps not surprisingly, team members are in support of the policy, appreciating the chance to unwind on a getaway or even at home. Quigley always enjoys hearing how employees spend their time off too.
But does their work, and ultimately the company, benefit? The answer to that would be "yes." Quigley says team members "come back more creative and energized" after their time away. Research backs up that assessment too: Taking vacation time has been proven to improve productivity and benefit mental health, according to a Project: Time Off survey reported by the Society for Human Resource Management.
What's more, Chatbooks' team members always plan their vacations well in advance and coordinate with each other to avoid a short-staffing situation. "We've found that when each team member communicates clearly with their coach ahead of time we are able to plan accordingly and allocate any necessary resources to cover," Quigley says.
Chatbooks asks its team for "eight amazing hours each day" — but, via a collaborative process, members have the opportunity "to decide when, where and how those hours are deployed." The company transitioned to its remote-first model during the pandemic, at which point it had just started hiring team members outside of Utah.
Related: Reddit Co-Founder Alexis Ohanian Challenges Work-Life Balance
"It was an exciting time to be able to hire new talent with specialized skills and experience from as far away as Alaska to New York City," Quigley recalls. "Expanding beyond a local talent pool has also given us the opportunity to develop a more diverse team."
Being able to include a broader range of perspectives and backgrounds at Chatbooks made any additional logistical hurdles, like "searching for a foolproof way to video conference," "so worth it," Quigley says.
Chatbooks also strives to come up with new ways to help its team perform at their best; the company currently boasts more than 35 official Chatbooks clubs offering different activities and prioritizes onboarding and offboarding for parental leave.
Related: Here's Why Women Take Less Vacation Time Than Men — and What to Do About It
