Microsoft has announced a liberal and flexible leave policy for its employees. As per the new leave policy, Microsoft employees in the US will be able to take unlimited leaves starting next week.
As reported by The Verge, Microsoft employees in the US will no longer be required to formally record their vacation as part of the new Discretionary Time Off policy. Kathleen Hogan, Microsoft’s chief people officer made this announcement in an email to the employees. “How, when, and where we do our jobs has dramatically changed. And as we’ve transformed, modernizing our vacation policy to a more flexible model was a natural next step,” mentioned the internal memo.
Here’s when the new leave policy will come into effect
The new leave policy will come into effect starting January 16. The tech giant will however offer 10 corporate holidays, leaves of absence, sick and mental health time off, and time away for jury duty or bereavement. The report further mentioned that the employees with unused vacation balance will also get a one-time payout in April. The new leave application policy is available only for the full-time employees of the company and the hourly workers will not be offered unlimited time off.

It is also important to note that the new Discretionary Time Off policy is available for employees in the US and those outside the US will get their present vacation benefits. Another Microsoft spokesperson told Bloomberg, “Hourly workers at Microsoft won’t be offered unlimited time off, nor will employees outside the US. Microsoft says federal and state wage and hour laws make it difficult to offer unlimited time off to hourly workers, and those outside the US will keep their current vacation benefits because of different laws and regulations in other countries.”
This is not the first time that a technology company has announced an unlimited leave policy. Companies like Salesforce, Oracle, Netflix and LinkedIn already offer a similar unlimited leave policy to their employees.