As part of the Olipop “Summer Recharge” initiative, the soda maker is promoting paid time off.
Under the program, employees are strongly encouraged to take a week off this summer. “To be clear, it’s not mandatory. There’s no punishment if you don’t take the PTO. What we really wanted to do was incentivize people to actually take it,” Olipop CEO Ben Goodwin told HR Dive.
The Catch-22 of unlimited PTO
Originally, Goodwin said he collaborated with Olipop’s HR team to create an unlimited PTO plan, where “managers knew they were supposed to encourage it.” He wanted it to be unlimited, he said, because “it’s really important to me that our employees feel like they’re being treated like adults.”
Along with wanting to provide vacation time, Olipop adopted a flexible PTO structure to cover sick days and child care needs and encourage personal well-being, Goodwin said.
“We have a very motivated, engaged, high-functioning team,” Goodwin said. “I never feel like I have to look over people’s shoulders. And a lot of our folks are really, really engaged around our mission.”
Still, he looked into research around unlimited PTO, which often indicates that employees are unwilling to take the time they need.
“I feel like I saw some of those trends in some of our own time-off behavior,” Goodwin said. “This is an amazing way to make sure we’re putting our money where our mouth is, and we’re actively incentivizing and encouraging folks to have healthy work-life balance and take some time off.”
How the idea for a summer recharge was born
The internal summer break initiative has its roots in an external summer advertising campaign. Goodwin said he wanted to go beyond “have fun this summer, and here’s a tasty drink while you’re having fun,” so the soda company launched a sweepstakes to provide consumers with an all-expenses-paid vacation.
“When we had the ethos behind that plan, we then decided to turn our attention inwards and make sure that we were doing the same thing for our employee community,” Goodwin said.
As a part of Olipop’s summer PTO initiative, leadership is asking employees to take five consecutive days off between June and September.
Similar to the consumer giveaway, Olipop employees also have the opportunity to sweeten their summer vacation. Once that PTO request is in, each individual employee is entered into a raffle for a $1,000 travel stipend for the month that they requested time off.
“We do comp and benefits analysis against the industry, so we know that we are paying our people fair and market-equalized rates. In theory, if you work here, you should be able to afford going on vacation. Especially since it’s paid time off,” Goodwin said, “you’re not losing any money going on vacation.”
Still, Goodwin acknowledged, it’s “expensive to go on vacation.”
“You could technically use the money for whatever you want, but our hope is that you use the money to actually make your vacation better,” he said.
What Olipop’s CEO hopes to get out of its PTO push
The reason for Olipop’s summer vacation initiative is two-fold.
The push is “basically just to say: Everybody’s been working their asses off. Don’t get burnt out. Spend some time with your loved ones,” Goodwin said, underscoring the importance of recharging creatively.
He also added, “This gives us this really lovely opportunity to send this unequivocally clear message to the company that our unlimited PTO is not just for show. It’s actually designed to be utilized.”
