Want to Improve Productivity?  Then, Make Sure Employees Take Their Vacation.

One of the many casualties of doing more with less is that employees do not do what is in the best interest of their own health. We hear or read about the medical fallout daily from national news sources. The curious can flip through the U.S. Obesity Trend slides on the Center for Disease Control web site for a visual confirmation (http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/obesity/trend/maps/).

Due to a variety of factors, not the least of which is high corporate work expectations, nearly 50% of American workers report that their stress level has increased over the past five years, according to the American Psychological Association. And, nationally, 70% say their jobs undermine their health in terms of exercise, diet and the impact of stress. Further, according to the Center of Work-Life Policy, 1.7 million people consider the hours they work extreme. Some of the resulting health problems are certainly due to individuals own Type A personalities. However, globalization, mobile devices, and fear of losing one’s job, also contribute the stress.

Many in Human Resources have been involved with developing wellness initiatives. Most times, these initiatives have been driven by corporate health care costs. Typically, the success stories these initiatives create relate to employee weight loss or smoking cessation. After all, aren’t smoking and obesity key health care cost drivers? Yes, they are. And they are probably the most observable ones, too. Often the simplest things are subtle and overlooked. That’s where company behaviors toward vacations come in.

Most American employers provide some sort of paid vacation benefits. Employees in the U.S. do not receive nearly the benefits as do employees of much of the rest of the industrial world. Whereas, on average, U.S. employees get 14 days of vacation annually, European workers get at least 20, with 25 or even 30 or more days common in some countries. (One out of four employees in the U.S. private sector get no paid time off at all, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research.)

Yet, even though the number of available vacation days is lower than the rest of the world, according to Hudson, more than 50% of Americans fail to use all of their vacation days. (According to Business Week, Americans take even less vacation than the Japanese, the people who created the term karoshi – meaning being worked to death.) Kathy Gurchiek of SHRM reported that there were four unused vacation days per employed adult age 18 and older in 2006. The top reasons U.S. workers gave for foregoing paid time off included inconvenience in having to schedule it in advance, being too busy to get away and preferring to receiving money for unused vacation time. Other top reasons include overall job pressures, working in a culture that discourages use of vacation, and feeling like no one else can adequately fill in while gone.

Yet, there is little utility in promoting a culture where employees do not take time away from work. According to the Families and Work Institute, overworked employees make more mistakes on the job, can feel anger toward employers for expecting too much, can resent coworkers who are not viewed as working as hard as they do, express lower morale and less engagement in their jobs, take more unscheduled absences (often faking sick days) and may end up looking for a new job.

In 2005, Air New Zealand wanted to know why “Americans don’t make vacation a priority.” They teamed with former NASA scientists in performing a vacation gap study of the psychological and physiological effects of vacations. Their process included attitudinal surveys, daily diary entries, and in-flight brain monitoring equipment of volunteers vacationing in New Zealand (detailed information on the study can be found at www.vacationgap.com). The study started prior to travelers departing, had continuously reporting throughout and followed up with them for a two week period after their vacation. Some of the key results were:

• On the last day of vacation, travelers demonstrated 82% better performance than prior to vacation.
• Performance for the two weeks after vacation sustained an improvement of nearly 25% compared to performance before vacation (people age 45 and older had 50% improvements).
• Travelers rated their overall health more than one full point higher (one-to-five scale) while on vacation.
• Vacationers got three times more deep sleep after their vacation. They continued to get 20 minutes more sleep post-vacation than pre-vacation.

The vacation study recommends five “excuses” employees can offer regarding going on vacation:

• When I first return from vacation, you’ll see an 82% increase in my performance.
•  More than half of survey respondents reported up to a 25% increase in happiness after a vacation and nearly the same reported that their stress levels dropped by the same mount.
• After I return from vacation, there will be a lasting 25% improvement in my performance.
• Vacation leads to better health through more rejuvenating sleep – which means fewer sick days.
• After a vacation I’ll come back rested and alert – this is hard science – the study proves it.

So, what should we in Human Resources do with this information? If we are serious about wellness, here are a few starting points to changing company culture for the good of employees and for increased productivity:

• Insist that all supervisors and managers take their time to set an example.
• Make sure employees are cross trained and have systems in place for when they are on vacation.
• Expect that when people are on vacation, they do disconnect.
• Be flexible in scheduling vacation.
• Buck the trend of providing pay in lieu of time off.

Kevin Peternel, SPHR, is President of The HR Effect, LLC (www.thehreffect.com), a Madison-area Human Resources consulting and recruiting firm with particular emphasis on improving relationships within small and medium sized organizations. Phone: 608.268.6065 Web: kpeternel@thehreffect.com

5S Levels of Achievement

Service Standards Training Module Presentation

Lean Thinking - Books

Liker, Jeffrey. Becoming Lean. Inside stories of U.S. manufacturers. Productivity Press, 1998.

Womack, James and Jones, Daniel. Lean Thinking. Banish waste and create wealth in your corporation. Simon and Schuster, 1996.

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