[throw0101a]

> I think this is a good thing provided it doesn’t take from people’s annual leave allowance.

I work at a place that, while not academia, is heavily linked to it via research, and so given that many of our external collaborators at educational institutions have a 'winter break', the company has been giving us between Christmas and New Year's off—in addition to our vacation time.

It's "ad hoc" in that the time off is not officially in any one's contracts, and is announced in Q4 sometime, but I've been here several years and everyone just expects it. Us IT folks do still need to be vigilant of alarms and such.

Vacation is nice, but if you do truly go offline, one tends to have to dig out of one's INBOX when getting back. If everyone is off at once, that's less of an ordeal.