“If you have a caged lion that was born in captivity, and then you open the cage, they back up more into the cage. They don’t start running free,” CEO Mark Douglas said in an interview with Business Insider. “When we first started telling people they had unlimited vacation, they didn’t even know how to interpret that.”
Mr. Douglas wants to eliminate the guilt or fear associated with take time off. The company will pay employees $2,000 a year across one or multiple trips, and it will even allow employees to use the company credit card to book flights if they can’t front the money, according to Business Insider.
Mr. Douglas told Business Insider the vacation bonus has been successful because company retention is so high. Just five of 250 people have left SteelHouse in the last three years, according to the report.
The hitch? Employees can’t simply cash in for the $2,000 bonus; it has to be used toward a vacation.
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