Chemonics is one of the leading international development firms in the United States, with operations in more than 85 countries and a workforce representing scores of nationalities. Chemonics’ U.S.-based staff reflects this diversity in terms of nationality, language, culture, and religious affiliation. For many years, Chemonics’ universal leave policy gave employees three floating holidays a year to use for days of personal significance; however, these floating holidays (identified in the 2020 policy as Presidents’ Day, Columbus Day/Indigenous People’s Day, and Veterans’ Day) could not be taken in advance of those specific observances in February, October, and November. In 2020, as was the case across the United States, there were staff requests to recognize Juneteenth as a holiday. Following these requests, in 2021 our human resources team, in consultation with Chemonics’ Diversity and Inclusion Council, recognized the need to increase employees’ flexibility to observe religious, national, or other days of personal significance.

In May 2021, Chemonics’ leadership converted the three floating holidays to personal days and increased the number to four days per year from three for all U.S.-based employees. This change enabled employees to use the personal days at any time of year and in increments of more than one (subject, of course, to the standard requirement of supervisor approval in advance). With this extra flexibility, employees have extra latitude to take time off for multi-day holiday observances, especially if travel is required. In addition, formal corporate communications recognized Juneteenth 2021 as a federal holiday and recognized Indigenous Peoples’ Day rather than Columbus Day to acknowledge and respect the complete history and experience of Native Americans.

Since its roll-out, 99% of our US-based staff have used personal days to observe religious, national, or other days of personal signficance outside of the corporately recognized holidays. Further, timesheet data for the weeks when the Presidents’ Day, Columbus Day/Indigenous People’s Day, and Veterans’ Day observances declined between 2019 and 2021, indicating that in the most recent year, U.S.-based staff used the floating holidays available to them in much lower numbers during those specific time periods. This suggests the employees have indeed claimed the floating holidays at other times that are of greater personal importance than Presidents’ Day, Columbus Day/Indigenous People’s Day, and Veterans’ Day.

Kenya Dugger, Senior Advisor and Director, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion