Microsoft employees can take paid leaves whenever they want from next week

Travelling more is one of the most popular ways adopted by young professionals to unwind after working hard and saving up. But trips to the hills, or a vacation in Goa and visits to the family during festivals, need to be planned according to the number of paid leaves available. But what if people get to take as many days off in a year, by earning time for themselves while they save up cash?

As many days off as you want

That's exactly what Microsoft employees can do now, as the tech giant has adopted a flexible discretionary time off policy. Through this workers can have unlimited time off, whenever they want, as long as they balance it out with performance targets. People can work for a certain amount of time and meet sales targets or other achieve other performance milestones, for which they are rewarded with paid leave.

No more fixed leaves

But with the adoption of this policy where workers can amass and use time off at their discretion, the fixed amount of leaves everyone is eligible for will be gone. With this move, Microsoft has joined the list of companies such as Netflix, Salesforce and LinkedIn, which already give time off in this manner.

The flipside

Although unlimited time off sounds like a great thing, critics are concerned that people might end up with less time off than the fixed number of leaves they get. It might also create work pressure to meet targets, if employees stand to lose their personal time. But so far, Microsoft sees this as a move to embrace a flexible future.