As part of our commitment to being a caring, empathetic and inclusive employer Joyous offers Joy Days and Joy Trips as outlined in this document.

CONTENTS

What are Joy Days

How Joy Days support you

How to access Joy Days

How Joy Days work

Joy Trips

People leader guidelines

What is this benefit

You get six extra long weekends: in March, May, July, August, September, and November.

Download the Joyous Joy days presentation

How this benefit supports you

• Joy Days give you additional long weekends, spread evenly over the year.
• You get more paid time off to do the things that bring you joy.
• A skeleton crew will work on Joy Days and take the following Monday off: you won’t miss out if you have to work.

How to access this benefit

1) Be employed full-time at Joyous

2) Post a photo of what you did in the #joyday Slack channel

How Joy Days work

Spend the day doing something that makes you happy, and share a photo with the team. Example of Joy Days for the Australia and NZ teams:

• March 8
• May 3
• July 5
• August 2
• September 6
• November 15

Accruing and deferring

• Joy Days don’t accrue. There are six scheduled each year, and they happen for everyone.
• If you are required to work through a Joy Day, you can take it the following Monday. If you’re off sick or on leave, then try to find some joy where you are!
• If you join Joyous just before a Joy Day, you and your onboarding buddy may join the crew that works on the Joy Day and takes the next Monday off. This gives you a bit more time to get to know Joyous before you go on leave. 😊
• If you’re not required to work but you have a compelling reason to defer your Joy Day to the following Monday, have a chat with your leader.

Customer experience comes first

• Everyone that works on a Joy Day to ensure customer experience stays awesome will take the following Monday off.
• Anyone who’s called in on a Joy Day to deal with a customer or product emergency can take the following Monday off.
• We can’t guarantee Joy Days – things might come up and we all might need to work. Keep this in mind when booking activities in advance!

Sharing your joy

Joy Days respect our culture of inclusion, so you’re not going to be judged for the things you enjoy.* Feel safe sharing whatever you do: if that’s sitting on the couch watching TV, more power to you. We encourage everyone to share Joy Day photos on Slack to spark conversations and build connections. If you spend the day watching Netflix someone may ask you what show you’re watching, sparking a conversation that might not have happened otherwise!

* as long as they’re, you know, legal.

USA

Joy Days are available to our US employees too - we'll work with the US team to tweak as appropriate due to differences in public holidays and timezone.

Joy Trips

Joy Trips are fun road-trips to nearby locations in March, September and December. Instead of doing our usual work we will pick a WFO (work from office) day, and arrange a road-trip instead.​

Spending a day together gives us a chance to learn things about each other that we might not otherwise. Things like who has a killer volleyball serve, or who can stack giant Jenga blocks unusually high.

Making trips a Joy for everyone We open up ideas for activities and events to the whole team. This is important, because we want to make sure we have activities that will bring everyone joy.

Joy trips respect our culture of inclusion. Any activities planned on a Joy Trip are completely optional, as are Joy Trips themselves. If for any reason you don’t feel like attending, then you’re free to take the day to do something else that brings you joy.

Sharing the Joy across regions We give all remote workers and overseas offices the day, and a budget to do something special. For remote workers who are their own, we also encourage them to share their Joy Trip with their loved ones.

We also make sure we share as much as possible about our Joy Trips along the way so we can see what other teams are doing. We use the joy-trips Slack channel for this.

People leader guidelines

• Encourage people to do something that brings them joy, not something they think might be expected of them.
• Make sure everyone feels comfortable doing whatever they want, even if that’s spending the day in bed. These days aren’t intended to be used for team building; nobody is required to participate in a group activity.
• Similarly, Joy Days aren’t intended to be used for professional development - though some people may find their joy that way. People shouldn’t feel compelled to spend the day on work-related activities.
• Lead by example by posting in the #joyday Slack channel, and encourage your people to do the same. Part of this benefit is engaging with the team and growing stronger relationships.
• If your team needs to be part of the skeleton crew working on a Joy Day or during a Joy Trip, consider asking for volunteers first. Try not to have the same person work through several Joy Days or Joy Trips.