The summer is drawing to a close and while some employees may have taken a good chunk of time off, others may have been more reluctant to do so. It’s a trend related to remote and hybrid work that’s causing some HR experts to suggest it may be time to review the workplace culture around […]
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The summer is drawing to a close and while some employees may have taken a good chunk of time off, others may have been more reluctant to do so. It’s a trend related to remote and hybrid work that’s causing some HR experts to suggest it may be time to review the workplace culture around vacation time.
Kathryn Tremblay, co-founder and owner of Altis Recruitment, recently started a LinkedIn post with a simple question: “Are your employees taking their vacation – or quietly stockpiling it? There’s a name for the latter: holiday hoarding.”
“There are lots of reasons this can happen,” she wrote. “People may be managing heavier workloads, trying to coordinate coverage, saving days for later, watching their budgets or simply feeling that stepping away will create more work when they return. In some workplaces, the flexibility of hybrid and remote work can also make the line between being ‘off’ and still being available surprisingly blurry.”
While “holiday hoarding” has been getting attention online, another term has also taken off: “PTO-maxxing,” where employees take all their allotted days off. While it may seem positive that employees are taking their full vacation time, Tremblay argued that if “PTO-maxxing” leaves colleagues in the lurch, it’s time to look at the way the company manages time off.
Speaking to OBJ this week, Tremblay said the rising popularity of the two concepts has caused her to reflect on why this is showing up in the workplace. She said that remote work has “changed our relationship to a vacation.”
“Thinking about my old days when I started in business, I was pretty young. I was 21. In those days, I didn’t have a laptop. So when you disconnected, you were fully off. But now, with hybrid and remote work, we all know how to work from anywhere. Work is with us no matter where we go.”
Workplace vacation policies aren’t necessarily the problem, Tremblay added, instead it’s the culture that surrounds them.
“I think employers actually do allow for vacation, they put aside vacation money or vacation time. But if (employees) can’t step away comfortably, that's a whole other story. Have people been cross-trained? Are there systems in place to support that? … What does coverage look like?” she said.
Even if all the correct systems are in place, Tremblay argues that some employees may feel they have to “holiday hoard” if leaders don’t set the right example for their teams.
“Sometimes the leader is the person who’s saying, ‘I don’t have time for vacation’ or ‘I only took one week of my four-week allotment.’ I think it comes down to the employer saying, ‘What is the culture that we believe in and espouse?’”
For internal communications expert Andrea Greenhous, leaders are a big part of how a workplace culture around vacation is shaped.
“Leaders are probably not establishing the norm,” she said. “If your leader is not taking vacation, then any ambitious person will be like, ‘They’re not taking it, so how does it look if I take mine?’ It’s about walking the talk. If you’re going to give people vacation and want them to use it because they need and deserve a break, then you should be setting the example yourself.”
While leaders need to create a culture around time off, Karen Craft, founder of iHR Advisory Services and CraftXecs, said employees also need to realize when it’s time to disconnect.
“Organizations have a responsibility for creating the conditions for employees to feel like they can actually step away, but I think it’s also the responsibility of the employee to hold themselves accountable for giving themselves permission to take vacation,” Craft said.
Working without taking time off is a perfect recipe for employee burnout, Craft added, which slows productivity.
“We’re not going to get the most productive individual nor are we going to get the most innovative problem-solving … Once you’re burning through all the gas in your tank, it’s going to take you a lot longer to do something than if you were rested and refreshed,” Craft said.
