Every Organization spends an awful amount of time building its culture – defining their core values, renovating the workspace, holding annual bashes and volunteer activities. Yet, many managers still fail to realize that while company culture takes a lot to build, it can be very easy to destroy. And you just may be ruining your company culture in two ways.
Step 1 : Go on Holiday.
Step 2 : Continue working like you never left.
This is common with most of the senior managers. Very few managers (merely less than 10%) leave work behind while they are on a vacation. The vast majority will get in touch with workplace at least once in a day. If you are that kind of a person who start to work by 9:00, and you are the last one out every day, and you follow up on all work emails even when you are on a vacation, you are setting a model for your directs and peers. Moreover if you are sending mails to your team at 10:00 at night or on the weekends or when you are on a vacation, that also sends the message to your peers and directs that you are always working so they should be too.
If you fall into this category, chances are that you are pondering about the effects of your absence while you are on vacation (What if something critical happens?) or when you return (if you have genuinely left work to really enjoy your holiday, how long will it take you to get ready for work again?) but before you “send” that email, just pause for a while. All emails do not carry the same importance, and when you are away on holiday, you are sending more messages than what your content notes can contain.
Sending Emails while you are on holiday is a sure way to ruin Company Culture
Every email sent by an employee on vacation is a tiny dent on the company’s value: an indication that even vacations are not actually time off work. In the grand scheme of things, these tiny dents are important. They give out the notion that “I am not comfortable that the job can be done in my absence,” or “I am not sure that I can tidy up my tasks before going on a holiday.” Regardless, they are a big dent on your abilities and likability.
While every employee can be guilty of this act, when you are a manager, the effects are much more severe. Sadly, many people do not realize the severity of the issue till it gets really bad. Furthermore, a company culture that does not encourage unplugging tend to have employees that are less connected and less committed to their organization. As opposed to companies in supportive cultures, they will feel less valued and cared about by their company. They are, also most likely going to be on the job market looking for new jobs. Around four in every ten employees who work in companies that do not encourage unplugging are looking to quit their jobs if they find a new one in the following year, this is twice the 20% of employees in supportive cultures.
Over the period of time an employee spends in a company, the boss is the greatest influence on them. The extent of that influence may not be immediately apparent to managers, similar to how downstream consequences of not unplugging from work during vacation may not be intentional. But the fact that they do not unplug from work during vacation is an indication of their support for their employees’ vacation time. The ripple effects of a non-existing vacation culture are evident, but there are several; benefits for businesses that see the merits of a real break.
After flexibility, healthcare, bonuses and retirement plan, vacation is the most important benefit for your employees which should be perceived as a chance to enhance culture.
Jim Moffat, the CEO of Deloitte Consulting, sent an email to his team before he headed to Scotland on vacation which entailed all the work his employees had to cover in his absence and closed like this; “Unplug a little before Labor Day, if you can.” He now references that by saying, “if you can,” he may as well just have said, “don’t try.”
A couple of days later, while checking his email on vacation, he received a response from a colleague and friend with the subject line “Some advice” that offered him a new perspective on vacation and urged him to trust those he hired to do the job.
The mail stated that “as a senior leader, you can’t control the day-to-day all that much, whether you’re in the office or on vacation. The decisions and strategy you set a year ago are what really dictate daily results. The only people who can really determine how things work in the near-term are the managers closest to clients and daily operations. If that’s not you, stop worrying and start trusting”.
Currently, Jim Moffatt is now a convert.
“You’ll be amazed at what you can do when you’re unplugged—and what your people have accomplished when you plug back in. I can personally attest, you’ll be a more confident and better leader because of it.”
If you’ve done your job right - you have hired the right people, offered them the right direction and provided the required resources required to fulfill the job. If you haven’t done that by the time you are off for a vacation, an email or a phone call from the beach won’t do the trick.
Let’s revisit our two-step plan for damaging culture and see if we can modify it.
Well, how about this for a change?
Step 1 : Go on Vacation
Step 2 : Be confident that your employees will take care of business while you are on vacation.
THE LAST WORD
The trait of a true leader is to step back, trust his people and allow them to succeed. This approach can open your eyes to a whole new talent and capacities that you didn’t know your employees possessed this can ultimately lead to the growth of your business if developed and harnessed. Work and technology are deeply connected. Knowing the importance and benefit of vacation time and creating an atmosphere where employees feel encouraged to leave office duties behind will eventually create a connected workforce that feels motivated, appreciated and committed – all of which are recipes for a healthy work environment.
REFERENCE : Forbes Leadership Forum / Project: Time Off / Worklife Balance - Harvard Business Review
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