05/25/2023

It's Time to Think Creatively About Vacations

Turn your vacation policy into a competitive advantage

All too often in today's workplace, vacations have become less a source of enjoyment than a source of frustration. Or a battleground: a point of contention between employees and management.

Ample research, plus my own experience and observations, have convinced me that vacations have become more of a problem than they should be: All too often employees feel stressed if they don't take vacations and stressed about asking for one. And made to feel guilty about taking one. How long can I afford to be out of the office? What will happen to my projects? Will my manager be overburdened without me? Will my manager be angry at me? What should be in a well-balanced working landscape a welcome benefit often turns into a quagmire of conflicted feelings.

An "anytime" vacation

This is why organizations need to think more creatively about how they approach vacation time. This thought was triggered recently for me as I was reading an article in MIT's Sloan School Management Review on how some business leaders were dealing with employee stress and burnout.

Please select this link to read the complete article from Psychology Today.