Not taking vacation – hero or idiot?

The other day on the NBC Nightly News Brian Williams shared a study about how Americans are not using their vacationtime.  He told compelling reasons why employees thing this was a good thing – stress, fear of job loss, concern over work backlog upon return.  The story was generally silent from employer’s view except to say that well rested employees aremore productive and innovative.

It might seem hard to believe, but early in my management development the old McDonnell Douglas Corporation (1980’s era…) used to publish a quarterly report to managers listing the names of team members that were losing vacation time.  This report was considered a bad mark on the MANAGER not the employee.  The company’s opinion was that the manager either was not properly developing their talent or could not manage their resources.  I can remember my leaders checking with me to see if I had vacation plans when my name started to show up on the “high count list”. Can you imagine how positive your team would receive this today?

Something to remember – real leaders do what is right independent of some policy telling them to do it.  Do you know your team members that are losing vacation days?  Are you helping them get time off?  How about you? Are you taking time to recharge?