German boss promises unlimited holiday for all staff - fully paid!

The boss of a German start-up has announced that his staff can take as many days holiday as they want every year, all of it fully paid.

The 37 staff at Ullrich Kastner’s firm can now take more than their original allowance of 25 days per year without sacrificing any salary – as long as they still manage to get all their work done.

CEO Ullrich Kastner said he brought in the perk after trialling it with a select group of employees first. He said that they proved they could handle the offer without misusing it and so it’s being rolled out to the entire firm.

Kastner’s company, the Leipzig-based Myhotelshop.de, is thought to be offering the unlimited holiday offer for a year, at least initially.

Kastner explained, “The team has proven that it can take over responsibility. That is the point and what it is about to me.

“My employees are not supposed to work according to the regulations, but to work towards a goal.”

Two of the workers who took part in the trial said they only took an extra five days off despite the unlimited leeway.

Kastner also said that workers who took part in the trial were less likely to call in sick as well.

He’s not the only boss to come up with the idea of unlimited holiday pay. Richard Branson allows his personal staff (around 170 workers) to take time off whenever they want, “The assumption being that they are only going to do it when they feel 100% comfortable that they and their team are up to date on every project” he wrote on his website in 2014.

Branson got his idea from Netflix, which introduced its own unlimited holiday scheme in 2010.