I won’t ask if YOU do this… but maybe you know someone(s)?
Please put a YES or NO response to this post.
Do they take ‘Quiet Vacation Days?’ Quiet Vacation Day (QVDs) are when you take a day off without getting permission or letting anyone / boss know.
An upsetting statistic from a Harris Poll discovered that as many as 79% of people do NOT use their allotted, paid vacation time, and why? Because they fear the consequences! And given the amount of stress, burnout, and lack of work/life balance this is a double disaster. One of the other responses of employees is to do ‘quiet quitting’, where they mentally do the very minimum required.
Employers; there are several ways to positively manage this:
- Make sure that you monitor, and actively assist (meaning put the support in place) your employee to take ALL their paid leave OFF. That is time away, out of the workplace, with NO one contacting them.
- Make a company culture of phones off out-of-hours and weekends. Set up a system to block all non-essential emails if necessary. Think twice before you send emails, especially, if you are copying in many people – do they all need to know?
- Include celebrating taking vacations and holidays – maybe a photo of what someone did or where they went. Make it the opposite of a quiet vacation – a loud vacation, celebrate! Enjoy.
- Be sure to lead by example from the top. I always insisted everyone took a lunch break in my offices, and everyone understood it was because they would be fresher, more productive and happier for the afternoon – their brains would have rested. When one employee went to another company, it wasn’t a week before she called to say that as she was walking out for lunch her boss called out from her desk, where she was eating a yogurt while sending emails, ‘Must be nice to be able to take a lunch break!’ To which my ex-employee replied, ‘It is not only nice, but also imperative for me to give you a good value performance this afternoon’.
- Most importantly, is that your company values Being Well and having a work/life balance culture. This must be demonstrated by implementing wellbeing programmes, a very simple one is to take 8-minutes a day to do the Mind Chi routine.
I used to have one room with bean bags and low lighting where people could go when they just needed that 10-minute break, in 12 years I never saw anyone abuse it. We also had ‘duvet days’, when you just need to roll over and get some sleep, or have a real down do-nothing day, and again, these were never exploited.
Your work world has changed. According to a Forbes article, if you have many Gen X, Y and Z employees, approximately 71% of them are already taking Quiet Vacation Days, it may be worth putting these few preventative steps in place. The Change Maker Group is poised to assist you to thrive through these changes.
To request a 15 minute Mind Chi Chat with Vanda
to explore how Mind Chi might assist you, your group,
team or company build resilience and joy!
Vanda@TheChangeMakergroup.com or Vanda@MindChi.com
And for more marvellous Mind Chi blogs:
Want more resilience for your organisation, here:
Here is a short cartoon about ‘Resilience for Change’