This post is the first of two pieces that will explore the importance of vacation time and how small companies can manage it. There are two sides to that coin: How do employers manage vacation time, and how do employees themselves use that time to create a healthier work-life balance? We will start with the latter, from the employee’s perspective.
A piece of research made headlines in early 2015 when it revealed that the number of vacation days Americans take has been steadily declining for the last 20 years. In 2013, the average employee in the US took 16 days of vacation total, researchers at Oxford Economics found. By contrast, between 1976 and 2000 that average was just above 20 days, which means the average employee has lost nearly a week of vacation time this millennium.
There seem to be several reasons for this trend, all of which could be defined as cultural — both in terms of a shared sense of American culture and in terms of work cultures at the company level.
“One oft-cited reason is facing too much of a mess upon return to work,” reporter Colleen Kane wrote in Fortune in May 2015. Kane spoke to a couple of journalists, for example, who told her their news cycles don’t leave room for time away.
“You just don’t know how far behind it puts you,” one reporter told her.
Then, the ubiquity of technology that allows some people to work from anywhere can also invite people to work at any time. Brad Tuttle at CNN Money reported in July that more than a third of Millennials spend some time working every single day of their vacations.
Project: Time Off, an organization that promotes time off as essential for all members of the workforce, argues that at the national level Americans have developed a “work martyr” complex. This complex leads many people to feel as though
- their work schedules are too demanding to step away for vacation,
- their workloads upon return would be too daunting, and
- they are either irreplaceable or do not want to be exposed as replaceable.
Baptist pastor Brian Croft has an interesting take on replaceability and work martyrdom in his own profession: “Using all your vacation time given to you forces others to step up in your absence, shows them they can make it without you for a time, and reminds the pastor most of all that God is not utterly dependent on him for this church to function.”
Project: Time Off suggests that a work martyr complex at the cultural level is “reinforced by company culture, chiefly poor communication around time off. Even though senior business leaders overwhelmingly recognize the importance of using time off, two-thirds of American employees say their company says nothing, sends mixed messages about, or discourages using their time off.”
When vacation policies are unclear, or when a workaholic culture is pervasive in a workplace, individuals tend to feel more comfortable defaulting to that work martyr position. That itself is a big conversation, which we will address in the followup post.
First, it is important to understand why employees need to feel empowered to take advantage of their vacation time, and how they can optimize that time to alleviate any fears of being away from work.
We All Need Vacation Time
Time away from work is as essential to people as breathing, eating and sleeping are. Sure, you can cut down in most of those things, but your mental, physical and emotional health will suffer as a result.
Tanveer Naseer points out that there is another key benefit to vacation time beyond it being simply practical. Vacation and leisure time fuel our creativity. “When we’re on vacation, we’re in a mental frame of mind where we’re open to trying out new experiences, to taste new foods, and to explore new environments,” he writes.
“Through each of these activities, we’re helping our brain to create new cognitive pathways because we’re going off our well-worn paths, employing a mechanism neuroscientists refer to as ‘global processing.’ It’s this process which often precedes those ‘A-ha!’ moments where patterns suddenly take shape because we’ve helped our brain to find a new way to understand and connect the ideas and experiences swirling in our mind.”
Empowering Employees to Take Their Vacations
Most companies both large and small understand the importance of vacation time and try to establish paid-time-off policies that balance employees’ needs for leisure with the company’s own needs.
Ironically, as work martyrdom tendencies have become further entrenched over the last generation, unlimited-time-off policies have become more popular. Richard Branson is on record as a fan of unlimited time off:
“Treat people as human beings, give them that flexibility, and I don’t think they’ll abuse it,” he told CNN. “They’ll get the job done.”
Companies such as Netflix and Zynga have adopted the policy.
Kin tried it, too, though we found it didn’t actually encourage people to get out of the office.
“Companies may offer discretionary time off thinking that if employees are given the option to vacation whenever they want they will inevitably not take advantage of the perk, period,” HR professional Kristen Shingleton Deutsch wrote in July for AccelaWork. “There is only so much time within a year to take off that there is really no ‘good time’ to do so, causing employees to not take time off at all.”
Instead, Kin has found, as have other companies, that providing generous paid time off and then transparently reinforcing that this vacation time is part of an employee’s compensation helps foster a culture in which team members feel empowered to take time away from work, guilt-free.
How to Make the Most of Your Vacation Time
As with any aspect of company culture, though, there is only so much that can be done from the employer’s side. It’s up to each individual employee to maximize her available vacation time. Below are a three tips for doing just that.
1. Take At Least One Whole Week Off
Various pieces of scientific and anecdotal evidence suggest that we need a full week to recharge. Inc.com’s Jessica Stillman reported in August on one study out of Finland that suggests Day 8 of a vacation is when our happiness peaks.
Don’t get too hung up on the idea of diminishing returns on vacation enjoyment once you get to Day 9, though. Financial advisor Tim Maurer wrote a piece for LifeHacker in 2013 in which he argued that 10 days is the magic number for his vacation time. With 10 days, Maurer said he was able to get into the unique rhythm of his own vacation while leaving room for his longing for home to arrive.
“The idea of sleeping in your own bed has increasing appeal, eating out has started to weigh you down, spending money like the Greek parliament has begun to feel self-indulgent, and you’re almost anxious to get back to the daily rhythms of work and rest,” he wrote.
2. Invite the Right Mindset for Real Relaxation
Getting into that specific vacation rhythm Maurer wrote about is difficult if you can’t get work off your mind, though. Entrepreneur and VC Brad Feld wrote in July about his own anxiety over vacation days.
“I used to struggle mightily with three-day weekend and holiday weeks,” Feld wrote. “While the rest of the world slowed down, I felt like the pressures on me were speeding up. I wanted everyone to get off their butts, stop relaxing, and respond to my emails. I was impatient and didn’t want to wait until Monday to try to address whatever issues were in front of me.”
Feld said he found that turning off all the stimuli that provoke this anxiety — the phones and tablets that keep Millennials working through their vacations, for example — freed his mind and body to work at their own pace.
“Blow off the 4th of July party that you don’t really want to go to and just stay home and watch TV in the middle of day. Let your energy go wherever it takes you. And recognize that all the emails, all the stress, all the anxiety, and all the people will be there on Monday ready to go again.”
Salesforce’s Heike Young agrees with Feld about blowing off social obligations, or not even making them in the first place, while on vacation. Instead, she suggested that you just get lost in some reading.
“Read a work-unrelated book about someone with very different problems from you,” Young wrote at Medium. “Immerse yourself in the world of science fiction, historical fiction, or even historical non-fiction. The point is to focus on someone different from you and get lost in their world, not a business or industry book.”
3. Set Yourself Up For a Smooth Return
Finally, be strategic about how your return to work. The Oxford Economics study revealed this to be a big sticking point among people who left vacation days on the table, so it might help to prepare for your return in advance so it doesn’t loom over your vacation.
“Create a list of items that must get done on your first day back,” Kaitlyn Russell writes at The Muse. “When you’re struggling to focus and don’t know where to even start, this is a great way to stay on track and accomplish the bare minimum. If you can push back tasks to later in the week, do it.”
Also, workplace consultant Dana Bilsky Asher, PhD, tells Self.com that Sunday return trips set employees up for a bad Monday. Instead, Asher, a senior vice president at workplace consultancy The Energy Project, says she plans her return trips for that Saturday.
And she doesn’t commit to any meetings for that first day back. “I don’t even promise when I’ll reply on my out-of-office message,” she says.
images by:
Quincy Alivio, Steven Van Loy, Todd Quackenbush