Chinese Retail Company Rolls Out 'Unhappy Leaves Policy' For Employees

Work-life balance has been a major issue globally for a long time now. The term refers to finding equilibrium between spending a sufficient number of hours working in the office and setting a specific amount of time to engage in your hobbies or spend time with your family or friends. Different companies globally had earlier come up with different ideas to help their employees improve their work life balance. Recently, a Chinese retail tycoon came up with a unique idea of ‘Unhappy Leaves’ at his firm which allows workers to skip work if they are unhappy to turn up.

As reported by South China Morning post, Yu Dongai, the founder and chairman of a retail chain in China- Pang Dong Lai has introduced this new concept at his firm which permits the employees to request 10 days of extra leaves at their discretion.

The founder said, “I want every employee to have freedom. Everyone has times when they’re not happy, so if they’re not happy, do not come to work.” He also clarified that if a staff member wishes to opt for the unhappy leaves, the management cannot say no to them. He added, “This leave cannot be denied by the management. Denial is a violation.”

Recently, a job opening created an outrage among users on social media. A Reddit user shared a post for a vacancy of a bookkeeper, where the company clearly mentioned that if an employee needs work life balance, then he should not apply for the job. However, this eventually didn’t go well with the online users.

The job advertisement read, “If your goal in life is to have a work/life balance, then please don’t apply. That is usually someone looking for reasons not to work. We are not a company that wants to work all the time but we understand that it is a required part of life, so work is life as well.”

Also, earlier an Indore based IT firm’s HR specialist shared a picture on LinkedIn and informed that her firm doesn’t let employees work after hours. The snapshot featured a computer screen in front of her, with the text written on it, “Warning!! Your shift time is over. The office system will shut down in 10 minutes. PLEASE GO HOME.”