'He's in our hearts': Family and friends still seek answers one year after Nathan Wise’s disappearance
It’s been a year since Nathan Wise went missing and his family is no closer to finding out what happened to him.
A U.K.-based recruiting company is scrapping its unlimited vacation policy for employees in favour of a fixed vacation limit of 32 days, a policy that its founder says will offer more ‘clarity’ on vacation standards.
“No one took more than 21 days in the year,” said Ollie Scott, the founder of Unknown, said in a LinkedIn post on Monday.
“That happened to be consistent across our top performers, so it set a sort of weird ‘guilty standard’ … There’s just a general anxiety of ‘yeah but like, actually how much can I take?’” Scott wrote.
Dozens of studies and surveys confirm that employees often take fewer days off if their company has an unlimited vacation policy, especially if there is a limited framework for how much vacation they can or should take.
In a 2017 study, HR platform Namely found that employees with unlimited vacation plans take only 13 days off per year on average, whereas traditional plan employees take 15 days off annually.
“Depending on how an unlimited PTO (paid time off) policy is put into practice, it often benefits employers more than the employees,” the study’s authors wrote.
Other studies suggest there is also an element of guilt involved in taking PTO, for both limited and unlimited vacation plans.
According to a 2019 TurnKey poll of 2,000 respondents, 54 per cent of surveyed employees felt guilty for taking a vacation, and 70 per cent logged into work while they were off duty.
On top of that, a record of 768 million days went unused by American workers in 2018 for those with limited vacation policies, a study by the U.S. Travel association found, citing ‘difficulty in getting away from work’ as a major reason.
Unlimited vacation has remained a popular perk among major global companies, such as Netflix, LinkedIn, GitHub and most recently, Goldman Sachs.
The number of job advertisements offering unlimited vacation days as a reward increased by almost 180 per cent from May 2015 to May 2019, according to Indeed, with tech jobs around six or eight times more likely to offer the perk in their postings.
Some Canadian companies have been following suit, but four-day workweeks are also gaining traction -- the Ontario township of Springwater is currently participating in a 4-day work week pilot project, and several Toronto-based companies such as The Leadership Agency and Alida Inc. have already instituted the 4 workday policy.
“The truth is that it was instantly impactful on our business," Jamie Savage, CEO and founder of The Leadership Agency, told CTV News last year. "The immediate impact was their well-being."
Changes to the way workplaces in the country are operating could have a positive impact on the way North Americans look at and are treated at work, the Harvard Business Review suggests.
Almost a third of working Canadians described themselves as workaholics, according to a 2005 Statistics Canada survey, and in 2015, almost half of Canadians surveyed by the Angus Reid Institute said working overtime was a choice.
Canadian employees are legally entitled to a minimum of 10 days of paid time off (PTO) annually. This law often excludes freelance, contract, temporary and gig workers who aren’t eligible for PTO, and as costs of living rise, can’t afford unpaid time off.
According to the government of Canada, federally regulated employees are entitled to 9 paid statutory holidays.
In the U.K., where Scott’s company is located, employees are entitled to 28 paid days off. According to the U.K. government, this applies to almost all full-time workers including agency workers, workers with irregular hours and workers on zero-hour contracts.
It’s been a year since Nathan Wise went missing and his family is no closer to finding out what happened to him.
Dozens of Ontarians are expressing frustration in the province’s health-care system after their family doctors either dropped them as patients or threatened to after they sought urgent care elsewhere.
An Ottawa pizzeria is being recognized as one of the top 20 deep-dish pizzas in the world.
Amazon's paid subscription service provides free delivery for online shopping across Canada except for remote locations, the company said in an email. While customers in Iqaluit qualify for the offer, all other communities in Nunavut are excluded.
The fire burning near Fort McMurray grew from 25 hectares to 5,500 hectares over the weekend.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin began a Cabinet shakeup on Sunday, proposing the replacement of Sergei Shoigu as defence minister as he begins his fifth term in office.
Police are searching for a male suspect after a man was “slashed in neck” on Sunday morning in downtown Toronto and died.
There were some scary moments for several people on a northern Ontario highway caught on video Thursday after a chain reaction following a truck fire.
Health Canada announced various product recalls this week, including electric adapters, armchairs, cannabis edibles and vehicle components.
English, history, entertainment, math and geography: high school trivia teams could be quizzed on any of it when they compete at the Reach for the Top Nationals in Ottawa in June.
An Ottawa pizzeria is being recognized as one of the top 20 deep-dish pizzas in the world.
A family of fifth generation farmers from Ituna, Sask. are trying to find answers after discovering several strange objects lying on their land.
A Listowel, Ont. man, drafted by the Hamilton Tigercats last week, is also getting looks from the NFL, despite only playing 27 games of football in his life.
The threat of zebra mussels has prompted the federal government to temporarily ban watercraft from a Manitoba lake popular with tourists.
A small Ajax dessert shop that recently received a glowing review from celebrity food critic Keith Lee is being forced to move after a zoning complaint was made following the social media influencer’s visit last month.
The Canada Science and Technology Museum is inviting visitors to explore their poop. A new exhibition opens at the Ottawa museum on Friday called, 'Oh Crap! Rethinking human waste.'
The Regina Police Service says it is the first in Saskatchewan and possibly Canada to implement new technology in its detention facility that will offer real-time monitoring of detainees’ vital health metrics.
Just as she had feared, a restaurant owner from eastern Quebec who visited Montreal had her SUV stolen, but says it was all thanks to the kindness of strangers on the internet — not the police — that she got it back.