RESPECT THE OUT OF OFFICE: How Companies can Encourage time off (Why They Should)

Prepare yourself: I might get a little sassy in this article. Because if there is anything that I get fired up about it's when a company pays lip service to caring about employee burnout and then disrespects their time off...

And we're coming up to a season where that happens a lot. Now, I couldn't find any statistics on how frequently this happens (trust me I tried) because, in my experience, it's usually because you're being contacted through your personal devices. There's no way to monitor that.

But, as I was looking for stats, I came across this article on "Ask a Manager." The person in question described a scenario in which someone was "rage typing" - such a familiar experience for so many of us, isn't it? - because she was supposed to be on vacation and was getting contacted her on her personal cell phone throughout her week off. This included being contacted 5 times on the very first day of her vacation.

I'm just going to quote this person in their description of why this was such bullshit:

"I let everyone know several weeks prior when I will be out of the office in the zillions of meetings I have. I also let them know who fills in me for me (she is lower-level and doesn’t have the director-level authority and approval that I do). When you start typing an email to me, Google will let you know I’m out of the office before you hit send. If you hit send anyway, you will get my out of office reply that says how long I’m out, when I’ll be back, that I won’t be checking email, and to contact the person who is filling in for me."

This is how it works. You are notified - often with plenty of notice - that someone is going out of town and, in my opinion, there's no excuse. Especially when it comes to the holidays. When the holidays are approaching, we know people are going to be out of office. We know this. We have to plan ahead.

But this is often why people still contact us on our time off...

#1 - We've conditioned them to. This is particularly true if you were an essential worker, healthcare worker, or some other emergency responder during the pandemic. Especially for healthcare workers, everything about the pandemic was a crisis mode. So, we probably blurred the lines, answering emails on nights, weekends, and vacations. However, it's been almost 3 years since the COVID pandemic started. We cannot keep doing this. It's not sustainable and it's already driven some great people away from careers they used to love because - newsflash! - they're burned out. So, yes, we may have been part of the problem at some point, but that's likely because COVID forced our hand. And - importantly - we can decide to change!

#2 - Our companies aren't truly supportive of time off. This is where the "paying lip-service" comes back into play. If a company says they care about your burnout and want to support you through it, and then violate the exact things they've said by disrespecting your time off.

I have very little tolerance for this anymore, especially after seeing some of the studies on unused vacation. In 2019, pre-pandemic, American workers had a record 768 million unused vacation days (US Travel Association). In 2020, due to COVID, the average workday lengthened by 1 hour and, overwhelmingly, Americans shortened, postponed, or canceled their planned time off (CNBC). Since 2000, America's vacation usage has dropped a full week, from almost 3 weeks down to 16 days (HArvard Business Review). The irony is that not only are these people basically donating their time and working for free, but they're actually less likely to get a raise or promotion. In fact, if you take 11 or more of your vacation days, you are more than 30% more likely to receive a raise or promotion than those who took 10 days of vacation or less.

(If my emoji keyboard were working right now, there would 1000% be a mind blown emoji inserted in here somewhere.)

Why am I so up in arms about this? Well, besides the obvious, I feel passionate about this topic because our employees are already giving so much more than they should, especially the last couple years. We cannot and should not ask them to give more when they're on vacation.

In another social psychology study I looked at, they found that persons who didn't use their vacation days "lacked detachment self-efficacy," meaning that they "did not expect to feel relaxed on vacation, and expected negative financial consequences of vacations."

I'm going to go out on a pretty sturdy limb here and say that they probably didn't feel like they could relax because they a) either felt compelled to check-in, or b) were being contacted. Or both.

So, why am I writing this?

Because there are some things that, I believe, companies can do to demonstrate that they respect their employee's time off.

• Model vacation and taking time off. I think a lot of behavior and culture change starts by modeling and leaders can model taking time off (and being fully disconnected on their time-off) to their employees so that they can start understanding that it is okay.

• Reward people for the work they're doing, NOT the hours that they've put in. I know that, just a second ago, I referenced a study that said people who took more time off were more likely to get a raise/promotion. Even with that info, I know that there is a corporation out there that is promoting, bonusing, and awarding the people in their company that have no life (hell - I've worked for those places). They reward them for "living and breathing" the organization in question. That's not just Netflix show phenomenon. It's real life. And until you shift the behaviors that you reward, you're the living embodiment of anti-burnout culture, and you're discouraging your people form taking the very breaks they need to be at their best.

• Don’t make snarky comments when people do schedule vacations. This is the crack that pisses me off. This is the person who makes the snarky "must be nice" comment when you share that you're going somewhere or taking some time off. This is the person who makes the "while we were all here working" comment when you share your vacation pictures. Sure, sometimes it's done in jest, but sometimes it's really not. And we notice the difference.

• Have times of year that are designated, company-wide downtime. I had the wonderful opportunity to speak to groups at LinkedIn multiple times earlier this year. Each time, the various groups brought up the fact that LinkedIn does this company-wide shut-down in June. I love that! Because this harkens back to what I mentioned before: sometimes people don't take time off because they know they won't be able to fully disconnect and relax and they're often not able to do that because work is still going on back in the office. In my day job, we have people working just about 24/7, so, if you ever stop working, you very well might miss something. All company shutdowns encourage full disconnection, which is the best kind of break.

• RESPECT THE OUT-OF-OFFICE. Honestly, this is the biggest, most important thing (which is why it get ALL CAPS). And it's so simple. Just respect the out-of-office. If someone has followed company protocols, let everyone that should be informed know that they're going to be on vacation, etc., then leave them alone. Don't call. Don't email. Don't text. An out-of-office does not mean "text me on my personal number." An out-of-office means that someone is out-of-office. Period. End of story. And if there are such fires and emergencies that you have to contact someone on their day off or vacation then, honestly, your company has much bigger sustainability issues at play.

Now, I do know that sometimes you have to send blanket communications OR perhaps you're working and don't want to forget to contact them about something. Okay. In situations like that, what I do is put a note in the Subject Line that says something like "Do Not Respond Until You're Back To Work" or something. That way, in the off chance that they do check their email while they're out, they know that this isn't an important item to respond to.

Also, for employees, if you have an email come in that you don't want to forget to respond to, see if your inbox has a "snooze" feature. This is something I first experimented with Superhuman (a cool, but costly web plug-in for email) and now also use in my email client Mailbird. It allows me to snooze an email until I return to the office so that I don't forget to respond to it.

So, in a nutshell, respect the out-of-office. All employees the time off they need without snarky comments, guilt, etc. It helps you get the best out of your employees, build an anti-burnout culture, and ensures that you keep your best employees around as long as possible.

Because, in my opinion, nothing makes you want to quit a job like your time-off being constantly disrespected.

What do you think? Do you agree? Is there anything your company does to show they respect your time off?

Drop a comment below!