Thankfully, the law defines the minimum leaves you must give — a clear direction to follow. But what about the many other policies left to your acumen? How many leaves accumulate year on year if unconsumed, how much gets cashed out, and so on.
Getting a fix on policies can be tough, because various interests are at play, often at conflicting ends.
When setting policy, three dimensions are worth weighing: law, industry practice, and best practice. Sounds simple, but reconciling them poses real challenges. Sample this: industry practice might suggest you let all or part of accumulated earned leave roll over if unconsumed. But is that the best practice for your philosophy? You might not want to be a workplace that rewards endless slogging — you'd rather mandate that staff take their vacations and roll over nothing.
So you'd go against industry practice and instil the habit of planning ahead to consume leave. That also teaches teams to model business deliveries around the behaviour.
Your policies are your workplace ecosystem drivers — think of them the way you think of product features. Remember the feature-comparison checklist, where you place yourself against competitors feature by feature to see where you stand? Do exactly that with policies. You'll quickly see why sitting at the legal minimum or the industry average is a losing game. Stay compliant, yes — then move toward innovating best practices.
And in the AI era, this is sharper than ever. The best people compare employers the way they compare products, instantly and publicly. A policy set that signals trust, clarity and fairness is now part of how you win talent — not back-office paperwork.
Just like features need re-working to sustain an advantage, policies need rejuvenation. So don't shut and forget. Keep at it.
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Originally published on the plugHR blog.