Unlimited Time Off Work

Barnaby Spence considers a new idea from the world of big business

The founder of a multinational corporation recently announced that his company would no longer be keeping track of its employees' paid holiday time. The move was apparently inspired by an internet company which has instigated a similar policy. According to the founder of the multinational corporation, the idea came to him via a cheery email (reproduced in many newspapers) from his daughter. In it she sounds suspiciously like a copywriter from her father's media team. (line 5) Setting aside the fact that the means by which the announcement was made seems like a hollow attempt at 'humanising' what may turn out to be a less than generous policy decision, let us ask: is the idea practical?

The internet company and the multinational corporation are fundamentally distinct - the former has 2,000 employees and provides a single service, while the latter has 50,000 employees with dozens of subsidiary companies providing services as diverse as financial services, transport, and healthcare. The approach of 'take as much time off as you want as long as you're sure it won't damage the business' seems better suited to a smaller company where employees have a better idea of each other's workloads and schedules, and so may be more comfortable in assessing whether their absence would harm the business - in any case a problematically abstract notion.

The founder of the multinational has stated that his employees may take as much le;_ve as they want, as long as they 'feel a hundred percent comfortable that they and their team are up to date on every project and that their absence will not in any way damage the business - or, for that matter, their careers.' Is it possible to be that sure? No matter how many loose ends you manage to tie up in advance of a holiday, there is always a mountain of work to come back to. That is simply the nature of leave; you put your work on hold, but its accumulation is inevitable and beyond your control. Someone who follows these guidelines would likely not go at all, or, at the very least, would feel overly guilty about going. Increased levels of guilt lead to stress and this, together with workers not taking sufficient leave, would lead to a decrease in productivity in the long run.

The situation could be compounded by pressure from colleagues and office gossip concerning who was off when, and for how long. Such pressure already affects decisions such as when to start and end the working day. Particularly in the corporate sector, there is a culture of working late, and it is easy to see how this could translate into a 'no holiday' culture in a company with unlimited leave, where workers compete for promotion. Similarly, if the feelings of safety and entitlement that statutory leave provides are removed, people may feel unable to take the leave they require for fear of appearing lazy. Essentially, they would no longer have their legal entitlement to fall back on. Perhaps then, the policy would result in a sort of paralysis, where workers did not feel able to take their entitled leave, or, they might continue to use their statutory rights as a guideline, leaving the policy obsolete.

Modern technology, which allows us to receive work messages whenever and wherever we are, has blurred the distinction between work and leisure time. The internet company apparently began their unlimited leave policy when their employees asked how this new way of working could be reconciled with the company's oldfashioned
time-off policy. That is to say, if their employer was no longer able to accurately track employees' total time on the job, why should it apply a different and outmoded standard to their time away from it? However, a potentially problematic corollary of having no set working hours is that all hours are feasibly working hours. Employees can never be sure whether or not their working hours are being monitored by their
employer, causing them to internalise this scrutiny and become self-disciplining, with possibly destructive effects. Employment law exists for a reason. Workers are entitled to a minimum amount of statutory paid annual leave because periods of rest and leisure are critical to their mental and physical health. The increased morale, creativity and productivity which are cited as the desired results of the unlimited leave policy can all exist independently of worker well-being. I remain doubtful, therefore, as to whether being 'able to take as much holiday as they want' is either the true intention or the probable outcome of this policy.

Reviews of Pieces of Light
Four reviewers give their opinions on a book about memory by Charles Fernyhough

A. In my view, the most important message of Pieces of Light is that the 'reconstructive nature of memory can make it unreliable'. It is wrong to see memories as fixed biochemical or electrical traces in the brain,like books in a giant library that you could access if only you knew how. People are becoming increasingly aware that memory is, in fact, unstable. The stories in Pieces of Light may persuade a few more - and anyone who reads them will enjoy Fernyhough's effortless prose. He returns repeatedly to his central message using a sophisticated and engaging blend of findings from science, ideas from literature and examples from personal narratives. Yet in disabusing us of our misconceptions, and despite this being the stated aim of the book, Fernyhough leaves us with little sense of a scientific explanation to put in their place.

B.'Remembering is a serious business,' Charles Fernyhough warns. It is this respect for his subject that makes Pieces of Light such an immense pleasure, as Fernyhough sees the emerging science of memory through the lens of his own recollections. In the hands of a lesser writer, such reliance on personal experience could rapidly descend into self-indulgence and cliche, but Fernyhough - a psychologist and published novelist - remains restrained and lyrical throughout. As Fernyhough examines the way the brain continually rewrites our past, it is almost impossible not to question the accuracy of our recollections. Even the events that we recall with the most vivid sensory detail are not to be trusted, he maintains. Although I remain to be persuaded, Fernyhough does serve up the latest findings in neuroscience and quotes academic studies without ever baffling the reader along the way.

C. Fernyhough, who is a popular science writer as well as an academic psychologist, wrote this book because he is worried that too many people still think of memory in terms of a vast personal DVD library. He sets out to show the reader how he believes it to actually operate, and I for one was convinced. The author plays a key role in his own book, returning to places that were very familiar to him in childhood to see how much he can remember. However, he gets hopelessly lost. Though Fernyhough is a gifted writer who can turn any experience into lively prose, these autobiographical passages are the least successful of Pieces of Light because they are too disconnected from any scientific insights about memory. There are also frequent references to literature. Yet whereas others might find these a distraction from the main narrative, I personally found the balance between science and literature refreshing and well judged.

D. A major theme of Charles Fernyhough's book is that remembering is less a matter of encoding, storing and retrieving an accurate record of events, and more a matter of adjusting memories to current circumstances, which may then alter them for future recollection. He mixes the latest findings in neuroscience with in-depth case histories. Nor is Fernyhough uncomfortable using personal testimony to put warm flesh on hard science: sizeable sections of the book are taken up with him exploring his own past. These do not add greatly to the book, and it is hard for the reader not to wonder whether it is really worth the effort of ploughing on with him. This weariness is reflected in his writing style. Surprisingly, however, Fernyhough is a lucid, concise and knowledgeable guide to all the data that generally stay buried deep in specialist journals, and that is where the book really springs to life.

Which reviewer...

Why Do We Read Novels?

We asked a group of academics for their views on the appeal of fiction

A. Cathy Smith
Is a work by a prize-winning novelist better than a trashy summer blockbuster? Undoubtedly, if you're looking for a literary masterpiece. But it's not 'better' if you're simply looking for escapism. 'Literary fiction', unlike 'genre fiction' such as mystery or romance, is not about escaping from reality. Instead it provides a means to better understand the world. What makes a work deserve the title of literary fiction can be pinned down, to a certain extent, by critical analysis of the writer's techniques. Yet a huge element of the appeal of literary fiction lies in something almost indefinable - the brilliant, original idea; the insight that, once written down, seems the only way to say something. Writers of fiction have to recruit or seduce us into their world - only then do we trust them to take us on a journey with them. The books we put down after only a few pages are those which have failed to make that connection with us.

B. Matteo Bianco
A novel - whether for adults or children - takes you places, emotionally and imaginatively, which you would never otherwise have visited. However, I don't think you should put yourself under any more pressure to finish 'a classic' than a kids' comic. And if by 'classics' we mean Tolstoy, Proust, Hardy and so on, then my own reading is distinctly patchy. The author Martin Amis once said that the only way we have of evaluating the quality of a book is whether it retains a readership. I think that's fair enough, though it's imprecise. A work of fiction can always be fine-tuned in such a way that the final experience for the reader is enhanced, and this fact must say something about the theoretical (if not practical) possibility of stating that one book is better than another. And while I can't prove that a single copy of a classic work of fiction is a greater gift to the world than a million trashy romances, I'm going to go ahead and say it's so anyway.

C. Gita Sarka
The author Albert Camus says that the appeal of narrative art lies in its power to organise life in such a way that we can reflect on it from a distance and experience it anew. Distinct from television or film, literature allows us significant control over our experience of what's being presented to us. One book I would always tell anyone to read is The Life and Times of Michael K - a literary prize winner, but hated by some of my colleagues. It's a classic for me because of what it says about living in difficult times; to a lot of people it's just a bit boring and the main character doesn't speak enough. Categories such as 'literary masterpieces' and even 'literature' do not exist independently of their assessors - assessors who are bound in an era and see value in part through the eyes of that era. Personally, I find it impossible to make claims that one work is better than another. I can say why it might be worthwhile to study it, but that's all.

D. George C. Schwarz
If, at a certain time in their life a person is interested in just one particular genre or author, that's fine as long as they have the opportunity of reading a wide range of books throughout their lives. These opportunities can come through family members, teachers and friends who can create the reading landscape and encourage them to look wider and further. A famous writer once said that it's easy to recognise the people who don't read fiction, as their outlook on life is narrower and less imaginative, and they find it hard to put themselves in other people's shoes. It's a generalisation, but with elements of truth. The power of fiction begins with fairy tales, nursery rhymes and picture books, which give children ways of looking at the world outside their own experience. Literature teachers often recommend reading 'the classics'. But what classics, whose and which era? In a way it doesn't matter - the key point is that one can't escape from a need for shared references and reading experience.

Which academic...