The answer comes back to financial accounting. The unstated point behind moving to unlimited vacation policies is what gets dropped in the process, and that is accrued vacation time, which you earn by working. The employer owes you that time once you’ve earned it.
The accounting problem for employers is that those accrued vacation days count as liabilities on their books, liabilities that have to be offset by assets. We may remember during the pandemic, when fewer people were taking vacations (presumably because there was no place to go). Companies were actually pressing employees to take time off, sometimes giving them financial incentives to do so. They did that to get those liabilities off the books.
When the company moves to unlimited vacations, it drops the accrued policy, so the liability goes away, and the company instantly becomes more valuable.
You might say, it helps the company but unlimited vacation time still sounds like it boon for employees. The reason it is not is because then employees lose their rights to vacation time. What they get instead is a promise that they can take what they need. But there is no promise that the management will not pressure employees to decide that they only need what works for the company.
Sounds reasonable enough in theory. But do companies actually carry unused statutory or contractual vacation time on their books as a liability?
Peter Cappelli is the George W. Taylor professor of management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
After all, we do now know that not everything said by an academic is true…..