Goldman Sachs Is Now Giving Senior Executives Unlimited Vacation Time

And you thought the “mental health” benefits at Twitter were out of hand?

Goldman Sachs is reportedly allowing its senior staff to take “an unlimited number of vacation days” in what can only be described as the next step to try and retain key talent on Wall Street. 

Both partners and managing directors are allowed to take time off when needed “without a fixed vacation day entitlement,” The Times of India/Bloomberg reported this week.

Junior employees, however, still have limits on vacation time but will be given “at least” two extra days off each year under the bank’s new policy.

All Goldman employees are going to be required to take 3 weeks off, the new policy states, including  at least one week of consecutive time off. 

While the idea is good PR and may entice talent to the bank, the report says it isn’t likely to make material changes to the bank’s current HR practices, the report notes:

A 2017 study by HR platform Namely found that employees at firms with open-ended holiday allowances typically ended up taking fewer days off a year than under traditional systems.

Companies are so desperate to retain talent on Wall Street, remember we wrote back in April that some interns on Wall Street were making up to $16,000 a month.

As we noted then, investment banks aren’t just defending themselves from other investment banks, they’re also defending themselves against tech companies that can sometimes offer a better quality of life as a worker. 

Recall, we wrote earlier this year that HSBC was set to double its bonuses for junior bankers in order to try and slow defections. It marked a change for the bank, which paid “less than most rivals a year ago after cutting the bonus pool at its global banking and markets division by 15%,” Bloomberg reported at the time. 

“We’ve got to keep pay across the board competitive,” Greg Guyett, co-head of GBM for HSBC said last month. 

And the competition in the space is real, with investment banks jostling back-and-forth to stay competitive with pay and retain talent for several years now.

At the beginning of 2022, we reported that JP Morgan had raised its junior bankers’ pay for the second time in a 12 month period. 1st-year investment banking analysts are now set to make $110,000, up from $100,000, The Business Times reported last month. 2nd-year analyst pay will also jump up to $125,000 and 3rd-year pay will rise to $135,000. 

Citigroup also said it was increasing pay after a blockbuster year in 2021, moving base salaries for junior bankers up to $110,000.