This company will pay you extra to go on holiday

A US tech firm is offering its employees a R100k bonus to unplug from their devices and go away on vacation, writes Elizabeth Sleith

A US technology company may just have pipped Google for the "best employer ever" title - by offering its staff extra money to take their holidays.

FullContact, an app developer based in Denver, Colorado, has a minimum leave policy by which employees must take at least three weeks.

What's more, it actually pays them to travel off the grid.

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CEO Bart Lorang's argument is that since technology is such an integral part of their business, "it's really important to unplug to become human again".

In addition to paid leave days, the company offers a $7,500 bonus (currently about R111,300) to anyone who'll promise to use the money to go on holiday. To qualify, they have to actually go away, unplug themselves from technology (no work e-mails, SMSs or calls) and leave their work at home.

FullContact's communications director Brad McCarty told the Washington Post that the system was working, "incredibly well".

"The really big names in tech all focus on the same idea, that employee happiness has to come before everything else," he said.

"While it's really difficult to measure that return on investment from a dollar standpoint, it's not difficult to measure what happens when someone returns from a Paid-Paid Vacation: you see, without fail, people shining brighter, working harder and more excited to get back into the swing of things."