Heading into 2022 PartnerHero unveiled a new US holiday policy to meet three goals:
One: Make our holiday policy more inclusive and, as part of that, flexible
Two: Refine the policy - the original policy was built during the early years of PartnerHero USA - now that we have hundreds of US associates it was time to make it more clear
Three: Accomplish the first two goals without impacting partner operations, ensuring that our partners continue to be thrilled with the level of service that we provide
In 2020 and 2021 we heard from employees wanting more inclusive and flexible holidays, making it possible for associates to celebrate holidays that are important to them instead of PartnerHero having a set holiday list, in effect determining which holidays “matter”. While we still think it's important that many people at the company can take breaks together, and have kept some major holidays intact, we’ve made a few changes.
First, we added Juneteenth as an official holiday at PartnerHero. Juneteenth, also known as Second Independence Day, celebrates the freedom of enslaved people at the end of the Civil War. For over one hundred and fifty years, African American communities have celebrated this holiday and we’re so glad it is an officially recognized US holiday.
Second, we added 2 “flex” paid holidays that people can choose to use when they’d like. Your birthday? Your wedding anniversary? A spiritual holiday that isn’t an officially recognized holiday in the US? Whatever day it is, we want our associates to be able to take the days off that are most important to them.
The second major goal for the new holiday policy was to make it more clear to employees how holiday scheduling is handled. If you’ve ever worked on an operational team that needs to be online seven days a week you know how challenging it can be to account for the fact that some people will already have the day off on the day that a holiday happens to fall. For example, when there is a holiday on a Friday but your “weekend” is Friday and Saturday, you essentially are not getting a holiday that others are getting. To navigate these tricky waters we’ve made it clear in our new policy that eligible associates who fall into this bucket get to pick a different day to use as a holiday.
The final goal is to make sure that none of these changes negatively impact our partners and their operations. To ensure we met this goal, we started working with top operations leaders early in the process. We came to them with three different proposals for the new holiday policy, each with its own pros and cons in terms of inclusivity, clarity and cost. Once we narrowed in on a proposal we shared it across operations management to get feedback and make sure none of the changes would impact partner operations and no one would be caught off guard.
The new policy is already live, giving US employees all over the country more, and more flexible, days off.
