One in three employees are guilty of not using up their annual leave and those who do go away often remain online, still checking and replying to work emails. Thanks to cloud computing with the ability to access not just your email, but your documents, CRM and billing platform from your mobile as well as using the mobile client for your hosted telephony, it is getting worse.
Taking holiday is important for both staff and businesses. Work can at times be all-consuming, so it’s understandable that workers find it hard to switch off and for many, the fear of falling behind on their workload whilst on holiday is enough to keep them in the office. However, those running a business need to have processes in place that encourage annual leave, otherwise staff could burnout. How many of these steps do you take in your business for example?
1 - Encourage annual leave
First and foremost, as a business you need to foster a positive message about annual leave and engrain it into your company culture so that employees don’t feel guilty about taking time off. Instead encourage staff to take a break and promote the importance of unwinding and leaving the office behind. You could also use annual leave as an incentive for reaching targets.
2 - Put simple processes in place
Your business should make the process of booking holiday easy. Make sure handover processes are also in place, so that your staff don’t have to worry that their workload is piling up in their absence; this could be achieved through a team meeting, via email, or both, so that their team is aware of what needs to be done. Similarly, activating ‘out of office’ responses helps employees relax that bit more, as they know that urgent enquiries will be picked up by someone else.
3 - Suggest a switch off
Businesses should encourage staff to disable their emails and leave the laptop at home, as a mental break from the office can be just as important as a physical one. For those team members who do insist on working whilst they are away, you should make sure that they know this isn’t obligatory, and recommend that they dedicate no more than an hour each day.
Keeping employees refreshed and healthy is key to business success and businesses that encourage their staff to switch off and recharge are likely to see increased productivity as a result.
If you run a company where both you and your employees check emails and work when you are on leave, you may already have invested in cloud technology to enable you to work remotely. If you have clients looking for faster internet connectivity, hosted telephony and cost-effective UK and International SIMs, contact Jola.
