{"id":174304,"date":"2023-08-05T10:19:51","date_gmt":"2023-08-05T10:19:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shrm.org\/hr-today\/news\/hr-news\/pages\/survey-work-free-vacations-elusive-for-many-.aspx"},"modified":"2023-08-05T10:19:51","modified_gmt":"2023-08-05T10:19:51","slug":"survey-work-free-vacations-elusive-for-many","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/squarehrwired.com\/index.php\/2023\/08\/05\/survey-work-free-vacations-elusive-for-many\/","title":{"rendered":"Survey: Work-Free Vacations Elusive for Many"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/squarehr.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/survey-work-free-vacations-elusive-for-many.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;However, the fact that 28 percent of U.S. workers reported being bothered by emails during their vacation suggests that their engagement with emails goes beyond mere inbox management. It&#8217;s likely that they are not just cleaning their inbox but are also responding to and handling work-related matters&#8221; while on vacation, he told <em>SHRM Online<\/em>.<\/p>\n<div> <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/squarehr.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/survey-work-free-vacations-elusive-for-many-1.jpg\" data-transbtoa=\"eyJmcmVlc3R5bGUiOnsieCI6MCwieSI6MCwieDIiOjE5MjAsInkyIjoyNjMzLCJ3IjoxOTIwLCJoIjoyNjMzfX0=\" data-publicid=\"News\/21-min_mfhi6r\" class=\"freestyle\" alt> <\/p>\n<p class=\"shrm-Element-Subtitle\">Why Are They Working?<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Nobody wakes up on their day off and thinks &#8216;I better check my emails&#8217; because they can&#8217;t get enough of their job,&#8221; Viktor Grekov, business productivity expert and founder of the OKR Software company <a href=\"https:\/\/urldefense.proofpoint.com\/v2\/url?u=https-3A__oboard.io_&amp;d=DwMFaQ&amp;c=nQOnw6HHAeKBNxj23OXhOw&amp;r=gvj5KjCPOOPLjJmVh70qn1EovLmvMSHSio7GSGPNDn4&amp;m=M8CRYJpBoc-PZeXAlurtoqWyWebLlNN3cm6ffBlj9vTYwAFoqhB8XYoyyEuNvD4F&amp;s=K4cKRVDXdA5zCRA7mAXgvDIhxZL_c0RpidLFd6o1CAE&amp;e=\">Oboard<\/a>, told <em>SHRM Online<\/em>. &#8220;They do so because they fear everything will fall apart if they don&#8217;t.&#8221; <br \/>In fact, 37 percent of respondents to the Elvtr survey said there was no one to delegate their work to during their vacation. Other reasons workers gave for responding to work-related messages during their so-called &#8220;down&#8221; time:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Anxiety: 57 percent feel anxious if they don&#8217;t check their work emails&nbsp;while away.<\/li>\n<li>Employer expectations: 35 percent feel an implicit expectation to work, but only 3 percent said they were openly asked to work.<\/li>\n<li>Control issues: 15 percent said they needed to stay in control of their work\/job.<\/li>\n<li>Fear: 8 percent are afraid of losing their job.<\/li>\n<li>Mistrust: 3 percent said they were concerned colleagues would take advantage of their absence.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Elvtr&#8217;s findings are not so surprising, given a Pew Research survey in February of 5,902 U.S. workers who don&#8217;t unplug when the workday is done. <\/p>\n<p>While not drilling down specifically to vacation time, the survey found that in general, 28 percent of workers answer work emails or other messages outside of their normal hours &#8220;often or extremely often.&#8221; More than one-fourth (27 percent) do so &#8220;rarely or never,&#8221; and 12 percent said they don&#8217;t receive work messages.<\/p>\n<p>Pew found that among respondents with higher incomes, 39 percent were more likely to respond to after-work messages than those with middle or lower incomes (26 percent and 20 percent, respectively).<\/p>\n<p>Members of Generation Z are slightly less likely to respond to work messages than other generations\u201441 percent versus 46 percent overall, according to Elvtr. Elvtr&#8217;s survey found 68 percent of all workers admitted to working during vacations\u201462 percent some of the time and 6 percent often or always. <\/p>\n<p>However, nearly three-fourths (73 percent) of all workers said they feel guilty about working during their vacation. <\/p>\n<p class=\"shrm-Element-Subtitle\">Setting an Example<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Sacrificing personal time to maintain job security is a common occurrence during financial crises,&#8221; Grekov said in a statement about Elvtr&#8217;s findings. &#8220;However, this can have devastating consequences for both employees and employers.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In the short term, workers experience increased stress and health issues and a decrease in productivity if they don&#8217;t have a chance to recharge, he noted. Long term, it can lead to turnover and employers get a reputation for disrupting their employees&#8217; personal time. <\/p>\n<p>Businesses should put comprehensive policies and procedures in place, Grekov advised, to make clear they do not condone work encroaching on employees&#8217; time off. His other recommendations: <\/p>\n<div><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Create team policies and strategies that address root causes for working while on vacation.<\/li>\n<li>Set collective goals that don&#8217;t overly rely on any one individual, for example, so that &#8220;progress doesn&#8217;t come to a standstill whenever a particular worker steps out of the office,&#8221; Grekov said.<\/li>\n<li>Provide tools to help employees work smarter and use their time more effectively.<\/li>\n<li>Set a good example.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&#8220;It may take some getting used to, but it falls on managers to lead by example,&#8221; Grekov said.&nbsp;&#8220;Take your vacation, make clear who to contact in your absence, set your boundaries before you leave,&#8221; such as setting up out-of-office messaging and turning off your phone, &#8220;and offer the same respect to your colleagues when they&#8217;re away.&#8221;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Offer companywide time off.&nbsp;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&#8220;With entire teams away from the office, there&#8217;s far less chance of unwanted interruption,&#8221; Grekov said.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/elvtr.com\/blog\/americas-alarming-lack-of-work-life-balance\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Some of the responsibility for not unplugging lies with the employee<\/a>. More than one-fourth (27 percent) of workers told Elvtr that they love their job so much they don&#8217;t mind working during vacation. Among reasons individuals do so, Psychology Today reported, is because they over-identify with the company, set high performance standards for themselves, or their self-esteem is wrapped up in their work. &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Company- or departmentwide time off could help alleviate a tendency to work during off hours.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;American workers are being pushed to the brink, with many sacrificing their well-deserved vacations and downtime in the name of productivity,&#8221; Peskin noted. &#8220;It&#8217;s high time we hit the &#8216;pause&#8217; button on this relentless race.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;However, the fact that 28 percent of U.S. workers reported being bothered by emails during their vacation suggests that their engagement with emails goes beyond mere inbox management. It&#8217;s likely that they are not just cleaning their inbox but are also responding to and handling work-related matters&#8221; while on vacation, he told SHRM Online. Why [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,502],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-174304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-employee-relations","category-hr-expertise"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/squarehrwired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/squarehrwired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/squarehrwired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/squarehrwired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/squarehrwired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/squarehrwired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174304\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/squarehrwired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/squarehrwired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/squarehrwired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}