“You shouldn’t be working while you’re on vacation!”
Says who?
Before I get eviscerated in the comments, I should probably elaborate on that …
I split time between two different worlds, with contrasting views on how people should work. The world of entrepreneurship glamourizes the nonstop grind. GSD. Whatever it takes. Suffer the pain of discipline.
It’s actually quite unfortunate. This kind of narrative discourages potentially great entrepreneurs from even trying, when the reality is that working 24/7 isn’t necessary and usually doesn’t even help. There’s abundant evidence that for most people, output drops off sharply after 50 hours per week, and once you exceed 55, the marginal gains are pretty much zero.
On the other hand, in the corporate world, I’ve seen a desire to promote “work-life balance” take the conversation pretty far in the opposite direction. Admittedly, being pressured NOT to work while you’re on vacation is a lot nicer than the converse. But I still have to shake my head at companies that actually remove employees’ email access when they’re away, or recommend to managers that “if you see them online, gently remind them that they are supposed to disconnect.”
These kinds of practices seem well-intentioned – if sometimes overly performative (a few weeks of enforced disconnection won’t make up for expecting 24/7 connectivity the rest of the time). But at the end of the day, we’re still reducing people’s flexibility to work in ways that suit their preference. We’re also being pretty paternalistic in assuming that we know why they’re online in the first place, and that we can help them make “better” choices.
There are, arguably, better ways. At Cinchy, we instituted an office closure between Christmas Eve and New Year’s so that everyone could take time off (over and above vacation allotments) simultaneously, without having to worry about our colleagues creating piles of work that would spoil our return. We also provided additional flexibility for staff who wished to carry over unused vacation from 2021. Contrast with other companies that responded to the pandemic by further restricting their carryover policies, forcing employees to take vacation during, shall we say, less preferable periods.
Going forward, my commitment as a leader is to spend less time nudging people to use vacation days, and more time engaging in dialogue about how I can support my team to work in ways that, well, work for them. I don’t know for sure where that will take us, but my guess is that the stark binary of “work days” vs. “vacation days” will become a little outmoded. With all of the technology we have to support work from anywhere, and the considerable advantages that a globally distributed team can provide, why wouldn’t we want to rethink these kinds of concepts?
Are you in favour of re-examining the relationship between work and vacation, or does that take us down a slippery slope?