Time Off
Everybody needs some time off now and then. We make sure that you can enjoy that time, without thinking about work at all. It requires a little bit of discipline from everyone in the team, but it’s mostly about a respectful environment.
Work how much you want.
We don’t expect people to work full-time. You’re free to decide how much you want to work with us regularly. Most go with a 4-day-week or a 7-hour-day here, but we’re open for everything between 20 and 40 hours per week.
You’re also free to work whenever it fits, as long as you can find time to schedule a call with the people you work with now and then.
Live your life.
We all know that your life is more than the job here. So if you need to go to the doctor, have an appointment somewhere or whatever, do it. It’s great to let others know you won’t be there in advance, but there is no need to take a day off or work late just because you had something else to do for a few hours now and then.
Just keep it fair and try to get your work done. Everything else is up to you.
Take what you need.
You’re also free to decide how much holidays you want to have on top of the statutory minimum vacation entitlement. Want more holidays? We calculate your salary accordingly, but the rest is totally up to you.
Experiments in other companies showed that people tend to take less time off if it’s unlimited, so we’ll put what you say in the contract. It’s limited, but you define the limit.
Share your plans with us.
We kindly ask you to involve us in your plans early. Are you considering going on a road trip next year? Just add it to the calendar and add a question mark, even if you didn’t book anything. We’ll take that into account when we schedule our projects.
Just keep us in the loop and tell us the exact date when you know it. As a rule-of-thumb, we expect you to share your plans for a 3-week trip three months ahead, for a 2-week trip two months ahead, for 2-day trip two weeks ahead, and so on.
That’s enough time to reschedule projects, onboard new project members, or inform the client.
Talk with each other.
In the end, we’re a small team, so talk to each other. If all developers plan their holiday for the same two weeks, that’s not easy to deal with.
We don’t want to disturb anyone in their holidays, and that’s easier when at least one developer is working. Same for all other roles.
Document everything.
With Skara, we have an excellent knowledge base for our team. Add everything we need to know to your regular tasks there, so it’s easier to pick up your work while you’re enjoying your life.
Inbox zero.
We disable all your communication channels while you’re away. You won’t get any message from us during that time.
If you want to share something with us, send a good old postcard.
Or if you really, really want to stay online, you can ask us to keep everything enabled. We don’t like that, but we think that you’re old enough to decide for yourself.
Time off for everyone.
Between Christmas and New Year, no one works here. Spend that time with your family or whatever you want to do, but don’t work.
Sick time.
If you’re sick in your holidays, go to the doctor. She will give you a certificate which enables us to transform your holidays into sick days in retrospect.
Easy as that. Anything we should add? Let me know on Twitter. Oh, and if you think that sounds to good to be true, try it out as a frontend engineer or a PHP developer.