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Compensation & Benefits

 

To Work or Not to Work on Vacation

Daniel Margolis

 

Taking your work home with you is sometimes unavoidable. Now, with all the tools available to facilitate working from anywhere at anytime, work can easily follow an employee on vacation — and often does.

“Without a doubt, it’s become a lot more prevalent,” said Rosemary Haefner, vice president, human resources for CareerBuilder.com. “People are staying connected when they’re supposed to be taking time off. Toys facilitate that. You’ve got your BlackBerry, your cell phone. And how great, you can be on the beach and have your laptop up and running.”

For talent managers, this is a sticky issue — as sticky as the issue of how to get employees to take a vacation in the first place. The biggest mistake employers often make, and may want to consider avoiding, is telling employees they must remain in contact during a vacation.

“As a manager, you don’t want to send the message that says, ‘I want you to take a vacation, but oh, by the way, I want you to return my calls,’ or ‘I want your BlackBerry with you the whole time,’” said Helen Darling, president of the National Business Group on Health.

Further, employers may want to avoid indicating they’re pleased when an employee works while on vacation.

“Don’t send the message that you’re going to be more complimentary of somebody because they’ve done that,” Darling said.

This might seem counterintuitive for a talent manager who would understandably respond favorably to an employee going above and beyond the call of duty. But it’s important to send the right message about what a vacation is supposed to achieve.

“I’m adamant that your vacation time is your vacation time,” said Mark Thomas, president of recruiting firm Thomas Executive Resources. “Unless there’s a dire emergency, like the company’s going under, I don’t want to hear from you, and you’re not going to hear from us because I feel that it’s important you completely get away and then come back. Myself, once or twice a year, I take an exotic trip somewhere in the middle of nowhere where no one can reach me because I come back more refreshed and able to work harder than I have the previous three months.”

For some, though, being completely cut off from work can cause stress and detract from vacation pleasures. For this type of employee, working on vacation is necessary and acceptable, but it’s important talent managers take steps to make sure this doesn’t get out of hand.

Darling, for example, does take a BlackBerry with her on vacation.

“I only check it once a day, and I do it at a particular time. And here’s a big difference: I only respond to those things that I need to respond to, which usually is like 1 percent,” she said. “I tell other people: Frankly, if you can manage your life so you don’t even have to do that, that’s what your vacation is for.’”

Another important step is for employees to have their e-mail and voice mail set up to notify anyone who contacts them that they’re out.

“The main thing is to send the message that you’re not checking so that people are only grateful if [you respond], but they don’t expect it,” Darling said. “People aren’t wondering where you are; they’ve already got an e-mail saying you’re on vacation and won’t be back for two weeks so, ‘Goodbye, have a nice life, and I’ll get back to you when I’m ready.’&rd 

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