By the time this blog posts, I will be on a faraway beach enjoying my vacation 🙂 As much as I love my job, I’m really looking forward to some rest and down time. Many of us delay taking a vacation due to workload overload and that’s a decision that may seem like a good idea at the time, but could backfire in a really bad way.
A recent article in the Huffington Post labelled this as Vacation Deficit Disorder, a disturbing trend of Americans procrastinating on taking vacation. The results of passing on a few days off are truly frightening; depression, poor health, increased stress, resentment and believe it or not, absenteeism.
Radisson hotels conducted a study last year of more than 1,000 adults and discovered that 48% of working Americans hadn’t used all of their vacation time. Several respondents said they turned down the time off because of their workload and the backlog that would be waiting for them upon their return.
At Teltek, we have a work hard, play hard philosophy. We are expected to exceed our customers’ expectations on a daily basis and that takes a lot of hard work, but we are also given a generous amount of vacation time and encouraged to use it.
In addition to our awesome company philosophy, we also have a good buddy system in place. Everyone here has someone in the office to cover for them if they are ill , out of the office on business or on vacation. It’s a necessary structure for any successful office. In the world of technology, where Teltek lives, redundancy is pervasive. You have a backup for everything and that should include your employees.
That doesn’t always mean you have to recruit more workers, but cross-training is essential to ensure adequate coverage at all times. If even one person knows your job enough to handle your responsibilities when you are out of the office, you are in a prime vacation-taking position! Cross training also allows for a little more variety in your day-to-day job duties and expands your capabilities and knowledge.
I think another great way to encourage people to take vacation is to get some ideas on interesting destinations or activities! Please leave your getaway suggestions below to share with everyone else. Let’s turn Vacation Deficit Disorder into A Vacation Is Definitely In Order!