When choosing how many days off people can take in your remote company, it’s hard to make a good decision since many factors are involved.
Planleave recommends using an existing policy from other great remote companies that you can later adjust to your needs. In this article, we’ll share our ten favorite remote companies’ vacation policies so you can use them in your own company.
1Password
This company, known for its great tool to manage passwords, offers a flexible vacation and time off, including additional personal and sick days. As of early 2020, they provided 15 paid days off per year and unlimited unpaid days.
Automattic
Automattic is the company behind WordPress, a blog engine that dominates the market, and many companies use it for their blogs and websites.
They have 1800 employees as of late 2021 and offer an open vacation policy (no set number of days per year). There is no minimum or maximum, but they encourage employees to take at least 25 days off each year.
On top of that, they have a generous parental leave policy (including maternity, paternity, LGBTQ+, and adoption for all parents). If the employee has been at the company for 12 months, their leave of up to 6 months is fully paid.
Zapier
This company has a great product to link together different services so that they work in collaboration. Very similar to what IFTTT offers if you’ve heard of them.
They have 250+ employees as of late 2021 and have an unlimited vacation policy and 14 weeks of paid leave for new parents.
Basecamp
This company is responsible for the project management tool with the same name and an email service called Hey. They’ve been in business for over 22 years and have been remote since the beginning.
Nowadays, Basecamp offers 18 days of paid time off plus ten national holidays every year for each employee. In addition, employees are encouraged to take a 30-day paid sabbatical every three years.
Buffer
Buffer has over 85 employees and offers excellent social media tools for small businesses and individuals.
They have a minimum vacation policy, encouraging team members to take a minimum of 3 weeks (15 workdays) of time off throughout the year. There’s no maximum time-off recommendation, though there may be more conversation with the employee’s lead for unique situations in which they might want to take, say, 6–8 weeks off.
The minimum time off of 3 weeks per year is in addition to public and religious holidays that the employee observes.
Doist
If you use to-do apps, you probably know Doist. They offer a great tool to track your to-dos, and everything is synced in the cloud.
Doist has 100+ employees and offers eight weeks (40 days) of PTO per year to use on vacations and national holidays. On top of that, new parents receive five weeks of paid parental leave and 13 weeks of paid pregnancy-related medical leave.
Gitlab
Gitlab is a great remote company that offers a Git-based tool for developers to manage and version their code projects. They have almost 1500 employees, and all work remotely.
They have a no ask, must tell time off policy, which means that employees can take time off when needed and only need to inform the company unless the leave is longer than 25 consecutive days.
Invision
Invision has one of the best design tools for the web, and all their employees work remotely, although most are in the US.
They have a flexible (unlimited) paid-time-off policy that accommodates employees’ needs and paid parental leave.
StackOverflow
If you want to learn more about programming and have a question, you will likely find the answer on StackOverflow. They have a giant site with thousands of programming questions.
StackOverflow offers 20 days of paid vacation, generous parental leave (16 weeks at 100% pay), family care leave, and paid sick days.
HelpScout
HelpScout is a great support tool for businesses that help them manage their email inboxes in a custom and great designed app.
They have 135 employees as of late 2021, and their time off policy recommends four weeks, but it’s flexible. New parents get twelve weeks to welcome a new family member.
As an extra benefit, employees can take a paid sabbatical for one month when they stay for four years or more.
Back to you
What’s your time off policy? Was it hard to craft it? Let us know on Twitter (@planleave), we’re excited to hear from you.
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