Career Spotlight: Take time for a real vacation
To paraphrase Henny Youngman: Take vacations, please.
Americans boast that because they work harder and longer hours than people in other countries, the U.S. economy is stronger and more dynamic than any other. But there is a danger that workers in the United States may be reaching a point of diminishing returns from longer work.
One thing is sure: More and more workers aren't really vacationing. On average, Americans let about three days of their average of 13 annual vacation days lapse unused. Even worse, 10 percent of those who do take vacation phone or E-mail the office daily.
The result: Workers return to work stressed instead of refreshed. Twenty percent say their work during vacations causes family tiffs. One third say they return to work just as stressed out as when they left.
Stacey Moran, an industrial psychologist for the St. Paul Travelers insurance company, doesn't see any end to bosses insisting that workers check in during absences. Years of layoffs have made nearly every organization short-staffed. Even if a boss doesn't require constant contact, many workers are so worried about job security that they insist on it themselves. "If their boss says, 'Don't take the cellphone,' they get very nervous," Moran says.
The only way to really get away from the office is to go someplace so far from cell towers that you have an ironclad excuse for being unreachable, she says.
But if your budget won't take you to the North Pole, you can limit the stress by, for example, getting your boss to agree upon a regular schedule of check-ins, such as a call every noon, Moran advises. At least that way, you won't be startled in midputt.
(The author plans to follow Moran's advice and spend her vacation hiking mountains without cell towers. See you in a couple of weeks.)
Senior writer Kim Clark covers the workplace for U.S. News when she is not on vacation.
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