A fakecation is a holiday where you spend your time fulfilling obligations instead of relaxing like you’re supposed to. Maybe you spend the whole time visiting the in-laws, or the true subject of this blog post: working.
In our modern, always-connected life, the lines between work and home have started to blur. Whether it’s finishing up a report at home once the kids have gone to bed; answering an email on your phone over breakfast; or clearing your inbox on a Sunday morning ready for the week ahead.
For some, working outside of normal hours at home is an accepted part of the modern age, but one area that should be completely off-limits is your holiday time. Holidays are there to ensure your employees get a chance to recharge their batteries and avoid burnout.
Time off completely from work, even if it’s just spent at home, helps your employees relax and feel refreshed, returning to work happy and content. But the reality for a lot of employees is that they can be contacted when their employer feels they need to. An odd phone call here and an email there doesn’t sound like much, but’s some find it hard to “unhook” from work to begin with so these micro-distractions can leave them “hooked” in for the whole break.
Obviously, there are emergencies where contact can’t be avoided, but these should be super-rare events.
Encourage your employees to turn-off or delete their work email account from their mobile phone while they’re on annual leave. If you use Slack or other tools for inter-team communication, then encourage them to delete that too. Even if you, as an employer, enforce a no-contact rule from your end, human beings are curious creatures and sometime can’t help but check into their own emails. Do what you can to re-assure them that this is not only unnecessary, it’s frowned upon.
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