Take a break.
Q. There are a number of people in our office who are too busy to go away and want to sell some of their holiday allowance to colleagues. I think this is a brilliant idea and wondered how other companies deal with it.
A. Doesn’t it seem something of an anachronism that there are those who do not have time to take their holiday and those who have the freedom to take more than their allowance?
The legal background to this is that employees have the right to four weeks’ paid annual leave. The employer can determine when this might be and it can include Bank Holidays. However, it is common practice in the design world to pay Bank Holidays in addition to four weeks holiday. It is also relatively common for practices to close between Christmas and New Year, and for those days to be taken as part of the 20-day allowance.
However, statistics state that 52% of employees do not take their full holiday allowance. This is likely to be connected to the fact that 85% say that they typically have to work longer hours leading up to taking a holiday to cover their work and a similar 85% who worry about work whilst actually on holiday. There must be a school of thought that it is not worth going on holiday under these circumstances!
Personally, I have a fundamental problem with schemes allowing the buying and selling of holiday time. It is absolutely vital that individuals take their holiday – there is a legal holiday requirement for a reason: Because too many organisations in the past were not treating their staff well enough. In current times, with such a high proportion of people failing to take their full holiday allowance, is it any wonder that there is an increase in stress related illnesses within organisations?
One key to this is “presenteeism” - defined as the “need to be seen to be in the office”. People feel they have to arrive early, work through lunch, leave late, never take sick leave, rarely take holiday, commonly work one or two days at the weekend, use such simple ploys as leaving a jacket on the back of their chair to be sure that people know they are in.
But, why should people have to work such long hours? Are they trying to do the work of two or more people? Are the company’s expectations of them unrealistic? Or are they inefficient? Are they over-designing a project and using up your hard negotiated fees?
There exists a commonly used phrase in the US: “Work smarter, not harder”. Working longer hours is not necessarily to the advantage of the individual or the company. If a company promotes or rewards staff purely on the number of hours they work, I would question the value of that recognition. The UK is already known as the “workhorse” of Europe – regularly working more than 60 hours a week with little improvement in productivity. Are we are so used to following in the footsteps of the US where a measly two weeks’ holiday is the norm and working long hours is endemic, that we have lost sight of the those elements in our life outside of work?
Is this another case where the UK sits on a fence between the EU and the US, and seems to adopt the worst of both worlds!
You might want to consider the idea that “model” employees whose behaviour matches that described above may be prime candidates to carry out fraud. Their work patterns mean that they can surreptitiously hire cars or book hotels, order computer equipment, abuse the payroll or internet systems and subsequently intercept invoices or reminder letters. This is not to say that everyone who works late and takes no holiday is guilty of fraud, but simply to point out that there is another side to every situation.
Rather than facilitating the buying and selling of holidays, examine the cause of the desire to do so. Are your employees as productive as they might be? Don’t they need to take regular breaks to recharge their batteries and refresh their creativity to the benefit of you and your practice?
June 2005
FX Magazine