How much holiday should you take?
If you have a no-limit holiday policy - how much holiday should you take?
The excitement of being able to travel again is palpable. A young friend of mine recently got a job working for a company which doesn’t have a set holiday allowance. It made me feel:
A bit old - that never happened in my day
Impressed - what an enlightened employer
Curious - how does it actually work?
I’ve always been someone who took their maximum holiday allowance (and even bought more if I was able to) but I know people who never took their holiday - they were too busy or they said their boss wouldn’t give them the time off. But in an orgaisation that allows you take as much as you want, how do you know if it’s OK to take 6 days, 6 weeks or 6 months?
When the lockdown hit, some of my team decided to cancel their holiday - they couldn’t go anywhere so why would they take time off? It wasn’t long before companies realised they would have to force people to take their annual leave and not store it up. Policies of ‘use it or lose it’ crept in - and that didn’t feel right. Surely you shouldn’t force people to take holiday if they don’t want to? But the more I thought about it, the more I realised that taking holiday isn’t just about going away it is also about being away from work so that you can re-charge and re-set.
So back to my friend. How does a new starter who has probably never met their boss or their team know how much holiday they should take? Or is that not even the right question any more?
Parkinson’s Law says that work expands to fill the time available. Maybe a no-limit holiday policy will force a different conversation between employees and their managers. Work priorities and home-life priorities will need to be considered in the round and force a discussion that is not just about the manager imposing arbitrary timescales on a particular set of activities. The conversation needs to become more balanced - this is what we need to do, do you think you can do it by x date. And it might actually lead to more productive collaboration and team work - can someone else help because I plan to be away for some of that time.
A cynic might say that companies who introduce a no-limit policy think they will get more from their work force. If the metric is the number of days holiday taken, they may turn out to be right. But the real measure of success is surely that the organisation achieves its goals, has healthy, motivated and happy employees who stay for the long-term.
Some people prefer to be told what the rules are and that’s understandable, but I can’t help feeling that working out what needs to be done by when, taking into account all aspects of people’s lives will be healthier and more productive all round. It might be difficult to achieve the right balance in the short-run, but the long term gains as we become increasingly aware of the need for looking after ourselves may prove otherwise. Having really open and connected conversations with your manager makes sense - you are likely to feel better and so are they.
So make sure you take time off and look after yourself and talk to your boss - make sure they are taking their holiday too!
I’d love to know what you think and as always, if you want to learn a bit more about how to get the best out of yourself and your team, do get in touch: [email protected]
