Give Each Employee A Day Off On Their Birthday?

Should every employee be given a free holiday on his or her birthday? One employer thought so…

I was listening to the car radio on a long drive – it was one of those shows where people can text/email in. I can’t remember quite how it came up, but the subject of people at work on their birthdays was the topic. Then someone emailed in to say he ran a company with just over forty employees, and he gave each of them a holiday on their birthday! His reasoning was that an employee at work on his/her birthday will:

• Spend a lot of time reading well wishing text messages and emails, and taking calls on their mobiles
• Distract other employees who will be wishing them happy birthday, and generally hanging around for a chat
• Go to the pub at lunch time and take their colleagues with them. When the workforce returns for the afternoon, they are likely to be suboptimal!

On the first point – re people being distracted by texts/emails/calls – giving that person the day off will obviously not recover any of the time lost. However, the fact that they will loose a lot of time anyway, means the employer isn’t really giving away a whole day. On the second and third points, the employer gains because he/she does not loose the time of other employees who would also be distracted by their colleagues birthday.

When I first heard this I thought “what a good idea!” Just give people the day off. As the guy observed, his work force think he’s a brilliant employer, and he’s cunningly giving something away to get much more in return, so everyone wins!

However, having thought about it, I’m not so sure. This guy said it was working for him, but there are some things I would definitely like to ask him if I could (which obviously I can’t because he was writing in anonymously to a radio programme):

• What happens the following day? Doesn’t the person who had the birthday get distracted by colleagues asking him/her what they did on their day off – and don’t the colleagues doing the asking get distracted spending their time asking?
• Isn’t there a lunch time expedition to the pub the following day, anyway, because the person was away on their birthday?

Giving employees the day off on their birthday would be an interesting experiment to try. However I would be very cautious about doing so, because if it doesn’t work it would be very difficult to take the privilege away afterwards.