Extra vacation as a work anniversary gift

by Rick Joi Rick Joi is the founder of The Workiversary Group and author of the award‑winning book, Inspiring Work Anniversaries.

If you calculate a salaried employee’s equivalent hourly rate, extra time off is really expensive compared to typical work anniversary gifts.

(To see the best of the typical work anniversary gifts, check out the workiversary.com Vendor Guide)

But, an advantage extra vacation time has over other expensive gifts is that there aren’t tax complications to worry about beyond what you’re already doing.

(For more on tax complications, see the workiversary.com Tax Guide)

You can give an increase in vacation time that continues every year after the milestone, or you can give time off that’s only good for that one milestone year. If you go with only giving the time for that one year but give a lot of it, then it’s a sabbatical.

(For more on work anniversaries and sabbaticals, see our Paid Sabbaticals blog post)

It actually costs less than it seems

Additional time off costs less than the simple calculation would imply for many jobs because for many jobs, the work expands or contracts to fit available time.

That is, the employee will find a way to work extra before the vacation or after the vacation, or their colleagues will do the same to cover for the employee who is out.

When does extra vacation as a work anniversary gift make the most sense?

The merits of various amounts of vacation or unlimited vacation or increasing vacation after a specified amount of time is a controversial, inconclusive topic.

But, super generally, if longer tenured employees are especially valuable to your organization because of high training costs, then increasing vacation time with tenure may make sense for your organization, and if it does, you’ll want to claim full celebratory credit for it on their work anniversary.

The most important mistake to avoid

Whatever you do, don’t make it an unannounced, anonymous, and imperceptible change to the per-pay-period vacation accrual amount that kicks in the following January.

Instead, deliver it on each employee’s work anniversary with celebratory flair! 🎉

One last thing

One idea that will sometimes come up is giving the employee their work anniversary off.

Don’t do that.

Work is where the people are who will celebrate a work anniversary. How will they do that if the employee isn’t there? It’s sort of like a kid celebrating their birthday by being away from their family.

While in almost every other way, it’s better for an organization to put their energy into work anniversaries rather than birthdays, if you’re going to give one uniquely personalized day off to an employee, give them their birthday off…so they can spend more time with their family!

(Learn more about the dynamic in our Work anniversaries vs. birthdays blog post)