Last week, we learned that Grant Thornton was jumping on the lavishly generous benefits bandwagon. The GC peanut gallery crowed cynicism as usual, but my own skepticism came with a suggestion: paid paid time-off!
That's not a typo. My thought is that because unlimited PTO usually results in less time taken away from work, GT should pay bonuses to its people after they take a certain number of days off.
Sure, it sounds crazy but think about it! Accounting's culture of guilt and face time needs to be combatted with something that these numbers people understand: cold, hard cash.
And it's not even a new idea in the realm of workplace benefits; but it would be new to the accounting profession and it's something that could work.
If a firm incentivizes time away from the office, the more likely a person will be to actually use it to earn that bonus. And if employees spend more time relaxing and recharging, they will be happier and more productive when they are at work (or so the theory goes). Hey, you might even retain a few more employees with a perk like this.
It's not a perfect plan, but it's crazy enough that it just might work. And accounting could use a little more crazy.
