Jul 21, 2008
Leave your Work at Work!
I recently read a vacation article in USAWeekend about the importance of leaving work behind while on vacation. The article reports that nearly 25% of American workers check email and voice mail while on vacation. This is something John and I are intimately familiar with. Some of our management members are tempted to call the office and answer emails while they are supposed to be enjoying a vacation. Out of respect to their vacation time, we often try to intercept their calls and scold them for calling in. We feel confident in doing this because we believe we have built responsible teams who are quite capable of handling issues without them for a few days. We travel a lot, so we see the ugly results of checking email and voicemail while on vacation. Our kids definitely notice when we are preoccupied with work and it ruins the atmosphere that a family vacation is supposed to instill. They can feel ignored and unimportant if work infringes on “their” time. We don’t like this for our own kids or other’s.
So, what is the solution.
1. Set expectations. We have found that if we expect the business to function without us, it usually does.
2. Start by telling clients and co-workers you are away and designate an alternate contact person. When we do this we are amazed at how empowered our staff becomes to handle everything.
3. Ask your spouse and children to remind you to detach and disconnect from work.
4. If you have to check email/voicemail set a specific time and then resume your vacation. We find that the hour after the kids go to bed is a good time to check in without disturbing the flow of the vacation. But remember not to let issues bleed into other times.
We don’t always practice what we preach, but we try very hard. We have left work totally behind and it is very liberating and healthy. The CEO of the Stress Institute reminds readers that “taking time for vacations and leisure is not luxury. It is necessity. The chronic stress of work can lead to emotional and physical illness.”
We’ll be celebrating our 15th wedding anniversary this fall. I can assure you that John will be leaving the laptop and cell phone behind (if he wants to make it to our 16th anniversary that is.)
-Tina Dowd
I agree with Tina. I know there are several staff members that call the office and respond to emails while they should be enjoying some R&R during their vacations or personal days off. I must admit, I’m included in that group. I promise while cruising the Mediterranean in October I will not call the office once or check any e-mail until I’m back in the states. =)
One disadvantage?? of working for this wonderful company is that we talk about vacations all week long. Makes you want to have 50 weeks paid vacation a year. Tina any chance of this happening:). I love vacations andit renews my soul and makes me more productive. Early Happy anniversary and from experience it only gets better and better.
great advice I recently went to san diego i loet my my phone battery die and didnt charge it until the end of the week i was so tempted to call the office on tuesday to see where we were in the office rankings im glad i didnt though
I just want to say that it is soo hard to leave work at work even on days off or weeekends because there is always so many new and exciting things going on with the company. Hopefully for those of people who do have to take calls from the office when they are away, it is always good news.
I too find myself struggling to leave work at work. I dream about how many shows we got on the weekends I don’t work LOL. I even catch myself answering my cell phone with “thank you for calling Sundance Vacations this is Becca”.
On my first ever real family vacation I believe I called the office 3 or 4 times, (could possibly be more) stressing out over the move into the new office and how my marketers were handling the change without me being there.
However, as soon as I earn more time off to plan another vacation, (which I definitely plan to do because the first one was wonderful) I have sworn to myself that I will leave my phone off the whole time, and not touch my husbands
Since I have just started with the company it will be a while before I can take a vacation, and has been a while since I have had a vacation. Talking about people’s vacations all day long and looking at the beautiful resorts I can’t wait until I can go away. I look at all the different places I want to go and I just can’t decide!?! but I guess I have a while to think about it… unfortunately