By Robin Bond, Esq.
Like a jealous mistress, office-obsessed employees fear if they leave you, even for a week, you'll realize you don't need them.
Just look at the new statistics from the Families and Work Institute: 79 percent of Americans had access to paid vacations last year, but more than one-third didn't intend to take them.
In a working world whose focus is on doing more with fewer employees, workers feel they need to prove they are essential. They want you to know you can't live without them.
If they never take a day off, they figure, you'll never have a chance to find out it's not true.
The rest you already know: All work and no play leads to burnout, stress, less productivity, illness and depression.
Vacations are the cure. Long summer weekends, no-work holidays and at least a week off at a time can do wonders to ease what ails the overworked. Work/life and human resource professionals are the ministers of the cure.
To cure chronic "office obsession," offer employees incentives for taking time off. Some ideas:
Reward employees for cross-training others who can fill in for them when they take time off. Tie the potential for raises and promotions to the practice. Those who have back-up could feel less reluctant to leave for a few days if they know somebody is taking care of business while they're gone.
Discourage employees from hoarding their vacation time to use as extra severance pay during a future layoff. Establish a fair and generous severance policy and let employees know about it so they won't feel the need to bank paid leave "just in case."
Limit the number of vacation days employees may carry from one year to the next. Faced with a use-it-or-lose-it policy, most workers will take more time off.
Offer a vacation bonus to those who take their paid time off. Even a small allocation-$250 or so-is a worthwhile perk for most. Some European companies offer as much as 8 percent of base pay as a vacation allocation. (And month-long summer breaks are common in Europe.)
As an alternative to an outright bonus, help employees save money for vacations by setting up a special savings program like the old Christmas clubs. Employees can opt to have a small portion of their pay automatically diverted to a special account each pay period, and the company can kick in $100 to get them started.
Force mini-vacations by closing the business the day before or after major holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas. Employees, who often need those days off anyway because they're entertaining family, will appreciate having the extra paid holidays.
Add three days of paid vacation-with a catch. To qualify to use them, the employee must take five consecutive days off every four months.
Allow employees to lengthen the workday so they can take an extra day off every week or two on a routine basis. Flextime is a great recruiting and retention tool.
Embrace vacations yourself-and encourage the CEO to do the same. When executives model healthy behavior, employees get the message that it's OK to do the same. Make it safe for them to say, "I really need some time off."
In return, the company gets more productive, refreshed employees who make fewer mistakes and feel better about coming to work.
