Mark Douglas is the CEO of the marketing and advertising company of SteelHouse, which is a marketing and advertising company. Mark has a very unorthodox way of keeping his employees happy in that he doesn’t offer them a choice when it comes to taking vacations. Instead, they MUST go!

Employees of SteelHouse are given the choice of taking one long vacation in the year, or breaking it up into shorter ones. Either way, Mark insists that they take time off and rest.

Mark explained that when the company was launched in 2010, his employees didn’t even want to go on vacation.

“If you have a caged lion that was born in captivity, and then you open the cage, they back up more into the cage. They don’t start running free,” he said. “When we first started telling people they had unlimited vacation, they didn’t even know how to interpret that.”

The next year, Mark decided to offer each employee a $2,000 bonus every year that can only be spent on vacation trips. If they say they want to keep working and just want the cash, Mark tells them, “I actually want you to go somewhere and enjoy yourself.”

This way, Mark’s employees can go enjoy themselves anywhere in the world.

“It’s one thing to say ‘You have three weeks’ vacation,’ as most companies do,” he said. “It’s another thing to say ‘You have cash, and if you don’t go on vacation and spend this money, the money literally goes to waste.’ It’s another level of saying this is real.”

Mark believes that trust is key, so he puts more faith in his employees than other companies in the corporate world. When an employee returns from their trip, they simply make a list of their expenses and the company reimburses them from the $2,000 capital.

Mark said that this initiative has made his employees more productive than ever, as they give their jobs and duties the best performance and attention they can. In fact, his employees are so happy that between 2013 and 2016, out of 250 employees, the company lost only three, who left due to the reasons not related to the job.

“We have virtually zero turnovers,” he said.

This just goes to show that people are happier when they are treated well in their workplace, and when they have the chance to get some much needed rest and relaxation.