The bottom line<\/strong>: working too hard and for too long can be unsustainable and unproductive. Employees that have a healthy work\/life balance contribute far more to your organisation than those who don\u2019t.<\/p>\nThis leads us to the question: why don\u2019t employees take all their holiday entitlement? There are a number of reasons this could be the case:<\/p>\n
Heavy Workload<\/h3>\n In this information rich world we live in, where the emails don\u2019t stop just because you do, many employees feel that they simply can\u2019t stop to take a break. Some employees, fearing what they might return to, feel it\u2019s not worth taking time off just to come back to an exploding inbox.<\/p>\n
Company Culture<\/h3>\n Managers not taking holidays themselves, can lead to a company culture where employees at all levels of the business feel it\u2019s not appropriate to take their full entitlement. This becomes a repeating cycle which reinforces the culture. Employees feel like they\u2019re asking for a favour to take holiday, rather than something they\u2019re entitled to.<\/p>\n
Too Many People Off<\/h3>\n School holidays and Christmas are obviously popular times for people to request leave. The bottlenecks at these times of year mean there are inevitably some employees who miss out on taking the holidays they\u2019d like. This becomes a problem when these employees fail to request alternative dates.<\/p>\n
Staff Shortage<\/h3>\n Staff shortages are much more likely to affect small businesses than larger ones, but it\u2019s something that needs to be addressed at any size. In small teams staff might not feel they can leave their colleagues holding the bag, especially during busy times.<\/p>\n
So What Should We Do about It?<\/h3>\n Our advice, lead by example: ensure management understand the value of taking a break, and encourage them to take all of their own holiday entitlement. Driving change from the top down is the quickest way to improve company culture.<\/p>\n
Keep staff informed: make sure all staff know where to find the company holiday policy and stress within it that it\u2019s not only okay, but encouraged, to take holidays.<\/p>\n
Communicate with your staff throughout the year about holidays, reminding people when the busy holiday periods are. As the end of your holiday year approaches, remind staff that have holiday entitlement left that they are encouraged to take it.<\/p>\n
Consider implementing minimum entitlement: a bold new idea being spearheaded by a lot of tech companies at the moment is the concept of enforcing a minimum entitlement figure. Essentially forcing your employees to use a certain amount of their holiday entitlement. Not only does this ensure your employees are well rested, but it demonstrates your company\u2019s commitment to staff and ensures people don\u2019t feel guilty for taking holidays.<\/p>\n
Make the whole process transparent and visible. Is it easy for your employees to find out how much holiday entitlement they have and what they\u2019ve used? Simply having an Excel spreadsheet on a shared drive can facilitate this, but using a tool like The Holiday Tracker greatly increases visibility for your employees, while allowing you to retain total control.<\/p>\n
Remember, everyone benefits when your employees make full use of their holiday entitlement. Employees return to work with more energy and a clear focus, which in turn makes them more productive, which is the ultimate goal!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Photo by Hilts uk on Flickr In the frantic run up to summer, the discussions at THT HQ have naturally drifted towards holiday entitlement, and the big question: how many people actually take their whole entitlement each year? Given that we have the data, we couldn\u2019t resist running the numbers: Surprisingly, 47% of our customers\u2019 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-holidays"],"yoast_head":"\n
Why your employees are not using their holiday entitlement?<\/title>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n