Talent · 6 MIN READ · AMY ROSSI · AUG 16, 2024 · TAGS: Careers / Employee retention / Great place to work / Management
This blog was originally published in August of 2019, and has been updated and republished.
TL;DR
- What’s changed with vacations between 2019 and now
- A tool you can use to identify burnout in yourself or team
- The original lessons learned shared from a real vacation
I first wrote this blog in 2019 as a way to remind myself, my team, and my coworkers that vacations are a required part of doing business. This was before COVID, so times were a bit different, including our working locations. However, the message is still the same. If anything, it’s even more important now as burnout becomes the norm.
I’ve taken more vacations since 2019. I had to be creative during the COVID years—my husband and I camped in the back of our Ford Flex after driving to a remote location to practice yoga. More recently, I’ve returned to more traditional vacations—celebrating my mom’s 80th birthday on another cruise, exploring the Scotland countryside after dropping my daughter off for College in Scotland, and traveling to France to understand what it means to be a “Swiftie.”
And no matter how much I know I will enjoy myself, it’s still just as hard to fully disconnect from work. I love my job, and I find myself thinking about it often, and even that’s exhausting.
So this is your reminder to:
- Take that vacation—even if it’s a staycation. Time away is good for you and your team.
- Check on your team. This ebook identifies the signs of burnout, and can help you recognize and address them.
- Make it a priority to disconnect. It doesn’t have to be for a full week, but give yourself time to be present with friends, family, and yourself. My team does quarterly restorative days, for example. This is a great way to claim one day a quarter that’s just for you.
- Take burnout seriously. It isn’t something to brush under the rug or ignore. It can have negative effects on you, your team, and your business.
*****
First, I’ve got a confession: I’m terrible at relaxing. In fact, one of my college entrance essays centered around the fact that I have a hard time sitting still. And I once had a roommate look at me and ask, “Do you ever just sit down and do nothing?!” Sure, sometimes I sit and binge watch a show, but I’m usually folding clothes or thinking about next week’s schedule at the same time.
Let’s just say I’m grateful I discovered the many benefits of yoga years ago.
But this blog post isn’t about my struggle with knowing how and when to slow down. It’s about what happened after I finally took a real vacation—one that involved me and my family with zero cell phone or internet services for a whole seven days.
Our view on vacays
At Expel, we believe in the importance of taking vacations and time away from work. It’s so important to us that we’ve included it in our Palimpsest (no, we didn’t make up a word). It’s a document our executive team developed together, and it outlines what we value about our culture and describes the way we want to work together. Our Palimpsest makes it clear that all employees should take the time they need away and practice self-care.
But here’s the thing: words are just words—in a Palimpsest or anywhere else—unless what you do aligns with what you say. The TL;DR is this: if I want other people on my team to take real vacations where they truly unplug and stop worrying about whatever’s happening back at the office, then I have to do the same. There’s nothing worse than a leader who wants people to do as they say and not as they do.
In the summer of 2019, I boarded a cruise ship to spend a week in Cozumel, Costa Maya, and Roatan with my family. I purposely didn’t buy an international phone plan for the trip. And when someone asked if I wanted (outrageously priced) internet access on the ship—I declined. I declined! That meant no email, Slack, LinkedIn, or Instagram for the entire vacation.
The seven (not-so-obvious) things I learned from my time away
There are plenty of things that happened on my vacation that anyone could’ve predicted—all the stuff that’s already been well-documented. Without emails, text messages, and meeting invites to distract me, I focused on the people around me and got to appreciate the beauty of the ocean. I read the book Where the Crawdads Sing, practiced yoga, and made a conscious decision not to worry about anything happening off the ship. I returned from my trip not just with a little more sun, but also some new perspectives—including why it’s so important for execs to step away and take a real vacation.
So here’s what I learned:
- If you take real vacations, so will your team. A “real vacation” is when you take multiple days away and truly disconnect from the office. This doesn’t mean you have to go anywhere exotic or fancy—staycations work, too. For this particular vacation, I was gone for a week, but others at Expel are committed to taking vacations that are at least two weeks. As our previous Head of User Experience, Kim Bieler, once explained to me, two weeks is a proper vacation and a game-changer for your well-being. Whatever length of time you choose to take, be sure to talk about your vacations and share pictures and stories. Talking about it is another signal to your team that it’s healthy and encouraged to take that break and unplug.
- Your team gets more opportunities to shine. While I was out, my team members stepped up and into work they don’t normally do on a day-to-day basis. This was a great experience for them, both in stretching their own capabilities and in determining if this new work is something they want to continue to do in the future. It also gave them more of an appreciation for and a front-row seat to what I manage on a day-to-day basis.
- You discover what you should’ve been delegating all along. If your team can do it while you’re out, they can do it when you get back. And handing the reins to your team frees you up to focus on new things. If you’re scared that delegating some of the things you normally do makes you replaceable, you’re right—but I prefer to think about this in a different way. If someone else in my org can step up and take on some of my responsibilities, that means I’ve built a great and capable team. And that’s a wonderful thing for your business, your employees, and you.
- You discover where you have gaps. Stepping away showed me where we need to improve our processes and better share information. For example, we encourage everyone to attend at least one conference a year and we budget $2,500 per person for this experience. While I was out, my team raised some good questions on how to best use this benefit, which prompted us to write some additional guidance for our employees.
- Your team has more opportunities to build relationships. While I was cruising, the people on my team connected directly—and more often—with our exec team. I try to encourage those connections while I’m working, but removing myself from the equation helped this happen more naturally while I was out.
- You’re reminded there are more ways than your way to get work done. I know it sounds obvious, but seeing work get done differently is good for so many reasons. One of my favorite parts of my job is helping leaders think about new ways to grow and help the people on their teams. During these conversations, I draw on my experience and the techniques I’ve developed over time, in the same way others on my team draw upon their own unique experiences. This means that the same conversation can have different outcomes based on the questions asked and guidance provided, and usually in these situations there isn’t one right way to get to an outcome. I enjoyed returning from vacation and learning from the coaching provided during my absence.
- You realize why it’s so important to communicate to your team the difference between a vacation and a trip. Many of us blend work and personal time when we go away. I take these kinds of blended trips when I visit California. I get the chance to spend time with my family and friends, while still staying connected to my daily work. I don’t consider these vacations, but if you look at this travel from the lens of a traditional PTO policy, it could require vacation hours. If you work at a company with flexible work locations, the lines start to blur, so it’s important to communicate in advance the type of time away you’re taking. If the travel is for a trip, then fine—define your rules. If the travel is for a vacation, then be clear that you’ll be disconnecting to protect your time away.
Moral of the story: if you come to work for Expel, we want you to take a vacation. And if you choose not to come work with us, I hope I’ve at least encouraged you to spend a few days fully disconnected. Do it for your own sanity and the development of your team. And you can explore burnout (and how to reverse it) in our industry more with our latest ebook: Always on? The impact of burnout on your cybersecurity analysts.
Now…off to get my Vinyasa on.
