Don't Lose Those Vacation Days: How To Manage Your Workload So You Can Take Time Off

When was the last time you checked your leave balance? If you’re like most employees, you’re probably in danger of losing a vacation day or two.

According to 2016 study by the U.S. Travel Association, 658 million vacation days are left unused each year. “More than half of workers leave time off on the table,” says Katie Denis, senior director of the U.S. Travel Association’s Project: Time Off. One of the common reasons employees give for not taking time off is fear of returning to a mountain of work because nothing will get done while they are out.

Employees also are often reluctant to use their leave when they don’t see their managers or senior leadership taking time off, says Lisa Chui, vice president of finance and HR at Ubiquity Retirement + Savings. Every Ubiquity employee starts off with three weeks and they can earn up to six additional days off for volunteering. After five years, employees earn a one-month sabbatical. Yet only about half the staff takes all their leave, Chui says.

Yet, some companies go out of their way to encourage employees to use their vacation time. At The Motley Fool, for instance, each month an employee is randomly chosen to go on a “fool’s errand,” which means they get two weeks off and $1,000 to spend but there’s a catch: They must use it within the month and they can’t have any contact with the office while they're gone. The "fool's errand" serves a few purposes, says Alison Southwick, a public relation's representative for The Motley Fool. "It’s fun, it makes sure people are taking time off, it gives us an opportunity to remind people to take time and it helps us make sure the company can still function no matter who is missing."

When Mark Kennedy, a software developer was sent on his fool’s errand, he already had a week’s vacation plan for that month so he ended up taking three weeks off. Was he worried? “I wasn’t all that concerned,” he says. “We work in teams and engineer ourselves so that anyone can be gone from work and projects will continue.”

There are ways to minimize the impact of taking leave. Here's how to manage your work before, during and after your vacation.

Before you go

A good place to start is to try and avoid taking leave during the busiest time of year for your industry or organization.

From there, outline a plan for who will take over your tasks while you are out of the office and make sure you have ample time to prep your backup before you go. Write a process document that your backup can refer to while you are out of the office.

If you’re working on a number of deadline-driven projects, Chui suggests setting clear expectations for deadlines with your client or supervisor so that no one expects you to complete everything the week you return from vacation. To ease the workload, Chui says, she schedules blocks of time in the two weeks leading up to her vacation so she can work on any deadline-driven projects before she leaves. Chui also makes sure she’s not attending meeting after meeting on the days leading up to her departure so she has ample time to tie up lose ends and pass on work to colleagues.

Be sure to tell people you are going on be out of the office ahead of time, especially if you take part in a weekly meeting or conference call, says Nancy Mellard, executive vice president and general counsel of CBIZ employee services division and national leader for CBIZ Women’s Advantage. Communicating your absence ahead of time is respectful to your team and gives you permission to be out of the office, she says.

While you’re away

Experts are split on whether you should work while on vacation. The key is to know yourself and decide whether you want to stay connected while on vacation and how much. Mellard admits that she checks email while on vacation because she enjoys her time off more if she knows there is no crisis at work.

Chui used to check email on vacation but says she stopped because she found, once she read an email, she felt compelled to respond. “Once you respond, you are setting the expectation for your employer and colleagues that you will respond every time they text or email you,” she says.

In fact, Chui says most of her colleagues don’t respond to email while on leave. “They have their out-of-office on and they designate who to call and they are clear about what day they will return,” she says, “and people are respectful of that.”

When you get back

One way to ease the transition back to work is to arrive home a day early, giving yourself time to do laundry, clean out your inbox and get ready for the week ahead. “It’s hard to get back into the swing of it, if you get home at 8 p.m. Sunday and then are back at work 8 a.m. Monday,” Chui says. “Give yourself a buffer day.”

Although you will likely return to a bulging inbox, the reality is there are probably only 25 to 50 emails you will need to pay attention to and respond to because the majority would have been taken over by events or someone else has handled them.