Ahh vacation – the 2 weeks your employees will be looking forward to when things are looking down. They’ve been dealing with garbage in the workplace, working in the dark, and dwindling corporate morale. They can’t wait to take some seemingly well-deserved time off. As an educated executive however, you know that giving employees time off is something you would rather not do, and if not for the government-mandated requirements, you’d have them work right through March break while you are enjoying a ‘business trip’ with the mistress in Mexico.
To minimize the impact of this ridiculous notion of vacation time, you need to make sure any work they would do during their vacation is done during the time they are at work. You also don’t want employees going too far away so they can come and work on an emergency basis if needed. Last thing – you want to control when they take vacation so it doesn’t affect the deliverables of the company.
So – how can you do this without breaking the law? Let me tell you how. In my neck of the woods there is a stipulation in the labor law that allows the employer (you!) to dictate when that vacation time is given. Sometime around March start floating a summer Vacation Signup form around your office giving your employees the chance to select their preferred vacation time. Promptly throw these away when received. Sometime in April or May (spring is the worst time to have time off) you’ll need to get your employees engaged on a very urgent project that has a fixed deadline. Encourage them to work overtime in exchange for the entire week after the project is completed at the deadline. This will indubitably create surge of excitement and employee morale in the week leading up to their week off. It will build team spirit as your employees come together to meet this meaningless deadline. During this time of increased productivity, make sure they accomplish the work they would have done in their week off.
Everyone will return from their time away refreshed and energized. This is good. Keep a smile on their face for as long as possible until the time comes for their ‘scheduled’ vacation. When your employees confirm they are ok for their pending vacation you’ll have to break the news to them. There is no easy way to sugar coat this, so simply inform them the company selected the week already and their vacation for the year has already been taken. Encourage them to keep working for the greater good of the company so hopefully some more time off can be scheduled in the future (October is a good time for this).
Don’t forget throughout all of this that it is still recommended for you and your executive team take as many vacations as you want. Remember, business trips with your execs can be considered a business expense and tax write-offs can (and should) be taken advantage of.
This is where you and your execs should be while your employees dutifully work away
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Morale and ethic, oh boy! Well, first of, wonderful article. It provoked a few thoughts that I would like to post here. They are not necessarally have direct relation to the subjects that you explored in the post, but let me post my thoughts nevertheless. The ideas about morale and ethics are not linier, disregarding of contexts they are used. Morale of a group is an ethereal term used to describe the capacity of people to sustain belief in an institution or a goal, or even in themselves and others.Yet the term of ethic is often used by “authority” figures (and everybody perceives himself to be so), as a general value judgment of the willpower, obedience and self-discipline of a group tasked with performing duties assigned by an “authority” figure, more accurately it refers to the level of individual faith in the collective benefit gained by such personal sacrifices. So, the conclusion is obvious – ethic is undisputably subjective. It is led by self-interest of the individuals or communities that take liberty to define it. What is more important is to empower individuals to enhance their capacity to maintain belief in the goal, in oneself and others, and behave accordingly to their inner intuition rather than imposed by others concets and judgments about what is good and bad. Well, that’s my 2 cents. Once again, thank you for the great article, and for the opportunity to reflect on highly disputable topic.