It pays to keep workers offline.
That’s the opinion of Bob Glazer,
the founder and CEO of global marketing agency Acceleration Partners, who
recently unveiled a new work perk: Employees who stay off workplace email and
other online communication while on vacation can earn up to $750.
He swears that policy is not just
good for workers, it’s also good for his company. “Delegating is a huge problem
… we don’t want people to design things around themselves.” If you instead urge
employees to be offline on vacation, they must delegate their work — and that
empowers other team members to learn new skills and ensures the company can
function better if an employees leaves, he adds.
Here’s how the policy works: After
six months at the company, employees can get a vacation bonus of between $250
and $750, depending on their role at the company, once a year when they take a
full week of paid time off to “unplug.”
Glazer also believes this policy can
actually spur creativity. Since he introduced it, he says, “we have seen people
come back more refreshed with new perspectives and ideas. They are mentally out
of the transactional state and into higher-level thinking.”
He may be onto something: Two in three workers report working on
vacation, and that’s not great for companies. Research from Kansas State University
reveals that disconnecting from work — mentally, physically and electronically
— is a key to cutting stress; that in turn could boost creativity because
stress saps creativity, studies show. And
creativity is essential for businesses to succeed, according to business leaders.
And a lack of delegating can impact
the bottom line: A study of CEOs by Gallup
found that those who were very good at delegating ran companies with
significantly higher growth rates and 33% higher revenues than those who
weren’t. What’s more, after returning from vacation, employees who said their
companies encouraged time off reported being more motivated (71% vs. 45%), more
productive (73% vs. 47%), and doing better quality work (70% vs. 46%),
according to research from the American Psychological Association.
Still, some experts say paying
employees to disconnect isn’t the right way to boost creativity and improve
their delegating. “As a blanket approach, I’m not a huge fan,” says NYC-based career strategist Carlota Zimmerman.
“Obviously, yes you want your people to take their vacation and truly rest up,
since that’s how we bring our best creativity and passion to the office — but
what about someone who, whilst on vacation, genuinely has a breakthrough idea
for the team?” That person could get less money at the end of the year, so
“aren’t we then somewhat rewarding people for being lazy?,” she says.
Others say it’s a savvy idea. “When
employees take a break it fosters greater creativity and therefore enhanced
problem solving, and it could push them to delegate and therefore empower their
employees and team-mates more,” says career coach Hallie Crawford.
And Call to Career founder Cheryl Palmer says that:
“A company that pays its workers to avoid working while on vacation sends a
powerful message that there are firm boundaries between work and leisure time.
In such a scenario, workers can actually become rejuvenated during their
vacation time because they have actually disconnected from work.
Of course, there are other ways to
encourage disconnecting that may be less costly. Arianna Huffington, CEO of
Thrive Global, announced in 2017 that she
was deleting all emails that employees got while on vacation. And German
company Daimler has a similar policy.
But while Acceleration’s policy does
cost them — 60% of their 100 or so employees took advantage of the program,
earning between $250 and $750 last year — Glazer says it makes sense to spend
that money rather than deleting employees’ emails, which he calls “a little bit
closing the door after the horse is out of the barn.” Acceleration’s goal, he
says, “is to stop the email from being written in the first place.”
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