A decision to offer all staff unlimited annual leave and unlimited sick pay created some challenges, game development firm Rocketwerkz's chief executive says.

But over time the generous perks offered to staff have become a good way to attract good people and get the best from them.

The company, which now has offices in Auckland and Dunedin, was founded in 2015.

It has a median pay rate of about $80,000.Chief executive Dean Hall said, when it opened its doors, it needed a strategy to attract skilled staff away from big studios.

 "You can have 30 people working on $20 million or $30m project so you're putting a lot of trust in them already. If you are trusting them with big projects and large amounts of money, why can't you trust them to manage their time as well? That's the point we started with."

Rocketwerkz settled on offering all staff unlimited annual leave, an idea that had gained some traction in Silicon Valley.

Hall also caps his own salary and gives staff a share of game profits.

But Hall noted that, there, there had been problems because people who were offered unlimited leave sometimes took less than those with restrictions.

To counteract that, Rocketwerkz required that people took at least four weeks' leave a year.

Hall said the idea of unlimited leave was to stop people turning up on days when it did not make sense for them to be there.

"You come in on December 23 and there's someone sitting at their desk and you say why are you here, why aren't you with your family, and they say they're saving leave up for the school holidays so they can take kids to Fiji. That's dumb."

People should be at work because they wanted to be, because they were working on big projects or were excited about something they were doing, he said. "Not sitting at my desk because I want to not be at my desk at some other time."

The business had started by offering unlimited leave to everyone but found that was not a good strategy for the juniors it recruited.

"For many it was their first real job and it went one of two ways. For some it worked fine but others needed structure, to be told the hours they needed to be at work.

"It can take one or two years before they start making value for the company and they need to get there by being at work and hearing what's happening."

Rocketwerkz had settled on a three-tier system.

The first tier, for the most junior staff, offered a normal working environment with structured hours and leave.

The second tier included unlimited sick leave. The third, for more senior staff, offered unlimited leave of all forms.

Hall said a significant number of staff, but not a majority, would take more than four weeks' leave a year.

"It really depends year-on-year. I don't think you can judge someone's work output by the amount of leave they are taking. Someone who takes a lot of leave could be getting the same amount of work done as someone who's not."

Hall said the leave provisions were a compelling point of difference for the company. It recruited creative people who needed to be excited to be at work, with their minds on their work.

"We pay pretty well which helps as well."

Hal said it would not work in all businesses but everyone could rethink whether the existing models of leave and structure were working. "I don't think a one-size-fits-all works for any company when you've got beyond about six to 10 employees."

A survey by Frog Recruitment showed that employers liked the idea of offering unlimited annual leave, though managing director Jane Kennelly said it was not common in practice.