Are you Working Harder to Make Up For a Vacation?

According to Darin Rowell and Kandi Wiens in the Harvard Business Review, this is a terrible idea:

But I also bet this sounds familiar:

Despite the clear benefits of time away, however, nearly half of American workers don’t take all the paid time off their employer offers. Chief among their reasons are worries that they’ll fall behind, or that time off will hurt their chances for advancement or even increase their risk of losing their job, as well as guilt over coworkers having to take on additional work.

If you work somewhere that this is an issue, it might not be you. It could very well be the workplace. A workplace that can’t keep right on rolling when one of the team is on PTO is a workplace that hasn’t planned, staffed, or done talent development well. A workplace that is truly looking out for the well-being of its employees would not leave anyone in a situation where taking a break is more stressful than not taking one.

Think about it, if there’s no one to handle the work while you’re out, that’s a failure of training. If you’re made to feel guilty about the fact that someone had to cover for you, that’s a failure of culture. If career advancement is dependent on never taking any time off, it’s a failure of leadership.

It’s not you, it’s them. Find a better place to develop your career.

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