I remember the good old bad days of recruitment, the work hard play hard environment. Looking back I loved it we were all in our mid 20’s pushing hard trying to get to the top of the league table, and we would only take a holiday when it was only absolutely necessary, like when getting married.

Well it seems like times are a changing as mentioned by “the chief happiness officer” who reports on IBM’s latest attitude to flexibility at work “take as much vacation time as you want”, “What” I hear you scream!!

Basically the golden rule is, work must get done. In truth I suppose it’s more like having a flexi-time arrangement. In the past the what stopped me from taking time off is the emotional blackmail, my boss used to say, “your candidates are relying on you”. So I didn’t take many holidays or even days off sick.

Years past and then I joined a more professional company and found that the top performer earned in excess of £100k per year part-time, this certainly made me look at work from a different angle.

I now work from home and can see the benefits of this system, because at the end of the day we are mature enough to know when we can take time off. More importantly technology enables us to have more freedom and I can have a few days off, knowing that if anything critical pops up I can always be contacted. I can access emails on my mobile and if someone phones my home office the call will get redirect to my mobile or a colleague, as a result I can go on that fishing trip knowing that I will not miss the biggest deal of my life or the biggest catch.

How will this effect IBM in the future I do not know, but I am sure it will help them keep their best staff. At the end of the day money isn’t everything, now is it?