I once worked for an Australian bank here in the U. S. What was even more shocking than the amount of their annual vacation time (at least four weeks to start), was the fact that while on vacation, employees were paid 117% of their typical salary. Why? “Because, it costs more to go on holiday,” they would answer us wondering why we would ask such a silly question.

So, I was intrigued when I stumbled across this article about a company that includes an Airbnb stipend. The CEO of NodeSource, Inc., Joe McCann, explains how challenging it is for emerging companies to compete salary-wise with larger corporations and why he needed to go beyond typical compensation packages to attract employees.

Is a traveling subsidy a cost or an investment? When people travel, they see different things; but most importantly, they see different WAYS of doing the everyday. I’ve redesigned closets, rooms, and workflow based on how space-constrained Europeans and Asians have to fit things in tiny spaces. It’s not just space you might rework – when you observe different approaches to the mundane, you can re-think all sorts of thought processes. A person can indeed come home from traveling and re-engineer, and improve, a way to approach a process, a problem, or a project.

For companies that are dependent on innovation, or expanding into global markets, I am not sure how they can afford to NOT give their employees a stipend to travel. Read More Here