Olipop's new PTO benefit encourages employees to take a summer vacation

For most working professionals across the U.S., summer vacations are a thing of the past — but not at Olipop.  

Despite already offering unlimited PTO, the probiotic soda company recently launched a new benefit for employees in an effort to incentivize them to take even more time off. Between the months of June and September, every employee at Olipop is encouraged to take five uninterrupted days off whenever they choose. The idea was to create a system where PTO was built into employees' schedules, instead of leaving it up to them.   

"The reason why I selected unlimited PTO as our policy in the first place is because I do think work-life balance is really important," says Ben Goodiwn, CEO, co-founder and flavor formulator at Olipop. "But there's research that indicates that in workplaces with unlimited PTO, employees will often take less PTO and that was not an acceptable outcome for me." 

Read more: How benefit managers can get ahead of the summer PTO surge

The "Summer Recharge" benefit program was inspired by Olipop's "Time Travel Agency," a marketing campaign the company was running for customers where they could enter to win an all-expenses-paid stay at a luxury hotel in Austin, Texas. The initiative aimed to combat persisting burnout, which is currently affecting 66% of Americans, according to data from online education platform Moodle and market research platform Censuswide.

"Americans are overworked, many are struggling with cash and we're all under a lot of stress as a country right now," Goodwin says. "As we were having conversations around the campaign, we realized that while it's awesome that we're doing that for our customers, our employees are Americans, too." 

While employees are not forced to take the time off if they don't want to, Olipop's team sweetened the deal as much as possible. In addition to the five days off, employees are entered in a raffle to win an $1,000 cash prize they can put towards plane tickets or their hotel stay if they please. C-suite execs are excluded from the raffle, seeing as they are the highest paid employees, but Goodwin says they are still prompted to take part in the time off.  

Finding new and creative ways to promote rest and relaxation at work isn't just a means to support employees' mental health and well-being, according to Goodwin. It's one of the best ways to keep organizations productive and efficient in the long run. 

Read more: Don't let PTO go to waste: An AI-powered approach to cashing out time

"You want your employee base to be seen and feel cared about by the company," Goodwin says. "Burnout is one of the biggest deficits to productivity and creativity. Many of the decisions we make because they're the right thing to do are also good for business." 

The new benefit has been well-received by Olipop employees, and Goodwin plans to make the summer program a permanent benefit at the company, and expand on it in the future. And while every organization may not be able to have the same approach to summer breaks as Olipop, Goodwin urges leaders to think outside the box when it comes to employee leave.  

"I don't think that as a leader you can just be maniacally focused on end point productivity if you aren't aware of the drivers and whether or not you're cultivating them," he says. "I think programs like this and the mindset attached are how leaders can think of the system as a whole."