Who do flexible working arrangements really work for? The rise of companies offering unlimited paid time off (PTO), four-day work weeks, and work from home options may entice top talent, but in reality the perks tend to benefit companies more than individual employees. Analysts and investors broadly expect that companies offering unlimited PTO will outperform the S&P 500, according to data from Bloomberg’s MLIV Pulse survey. However, it’s unclear whether expectations for these companies’ strong performance is because of their PTO policies in and of themselves or if it’s more connected to the type of employer who would embrace these policies, a senior partner at consulting firm Mercer says.
The thing is, having access to abundant PTO doesn’t actually lead to a whole lot of vacations: Less than 40% of those surveyed reported to take more than 20 days off a year, and only a third said they take a full week of holiday more than once a year — and that’s compared to about two-thirds of their counterparts in other regions. Unlimited paid time off — currently most popular with tech companies, although 8% of US companies offer the perk — helps employers reduce administrative headaches and slash costs. Yet for those that implement the policies two thirds said that the amount of time staff took didn’t change, while any reported change was affected by employees actually taking less leave. It’s hard for workers to grasp how much vacation is socially acceptable with the risk of leaving extra work for colleagues or being sidelined for competitive projects.
And it might actually have the opposite effect: Already, some 60% of finance professionals reported monitoring work messages and emails while on vacation, according to the business information service. The case may be more extreme for those making use of unlimited PTO, with one investment officer saying, “When I hear unlimited time off I think you are on call and accountable at ALL times.”
Got (raw) milk? Approximately 5% of adults in the US have consumed raw milk, instead of its “safer” pasteurized version, raising concerns among health experts, according to the National Geographic. A group of unpasteurized milk producers claim benefits such as help with asthma, allergies, lactose intolerance, eczema, and respiratory diseases, among other gastrointestinal diseases. They claim that these gains are lost when raw milk undergoes the usual pasteurization process, which kills bacteria such as E. coli, salmonella, and other harmful germs. Some of these germs can cause prenatal mortality, fetal mortality, tuberculosis, typhoid fever, paralysis, stroke and death in others with auto-immune diseases.
It’s not completely illegal in the US, but it’s probably not worth the health risk: Since 1987, the US FDA prohibited the sale of raw milk along state lines, but that did not stop individual states from setting their own rules regarding raw milk. Mark McAfee, founder of Raw Farm and the Raw Milk Institute, an international nonprofit that promotes the safe production of raw milk products, claims that unpasteurized milk is living its “renaissance” and it isn’t “dirty.” Raw milk has undergone FDA-approved methods to test for four germs: Campylobacter, E. coli, salmonella, and Listeria monocytogenes but is just not pasteurized, he says.