Summer is winding down, and the time for summer vacations is over.  I just got back from my summer vacation, so I thought it would be appropriate to write about giving your employees vacations.  This, of course, is a continuation of how to hire and keep good help.

Barbara Babkirk, in her Lifeworks Blog, wrote an entry about taking a vacation.  In it, she expressed concern that people are not using their full vacation time, and many people rarely take a full week off from work.  The reasons for a vacation are obvious; a more rested and less stressed-out person will enjoy a better quality of life in the long run.

People that don’t take all their vacation time, by and large, feel that they can’t.  They may feel that operations will fall apart when they leave, that there is too much work to do, or that it is too hard to prepare all the work and finish projects before leaving.  These are all legitimate reasons that cause more stress in taking a vacation, making any vacation counter-productive.  Here are a few things you, as an employer, can do to help the vacation process keep your employees happy and productive. 

1. Take vacations yourself.  If you take time off, with some vacations lasting a week or more, you will set up a culture that values time away from the office.  If you never take time off, people will be afraid to use their available time for fear of losing status with the boss.
2. Encourage planning ahead on vacations.  Set up a system that encourages the employee to plan a few months in advance for a week or more vacation.  This way, there is no rush to finish projects just before the vacation begins.  As the employer, you can avoid assigning new projects just a couple days before the vacation begins.
3. Beat the average on vacation time.  Make sure the employees have plenty of time for vacations, and don’t make them work for ten years to get the full vacation benefit.  Find out the average vacation times for similar jobs, and make sure you are giving more.
4. Have a system in place for the person leaving.  If you are a small company, you may need to use a temp service to get the job done.  Some companies can get away with dividing the workload among non-vacationing employees.  Once you are set up, though, the process becomes much simpler.  If you want people to take vacations, they need to believe they can do so without ruining the company or losing their job.  It will cost you more in the short term, but will give you and the employee confidence in leaving the job behind during vacation.
5. Don’t call the employee while he or she is away.  This happens all the time to IT professionals, since they know how to do everything with the office computer systems.  Try to solve the problem on your own and leave the resting employee alone.  One phone call can ruin an entire day, or even the whole week, if they now feel they are on call to the company.  If it is an all-out emergency, make sure to pay the employee for his time.
6. Use vacations as an incentive.  Sales, production, project completion, and almost anything can be rewarded.  More vacation time or even a paid cruise or trip help to fortify the culture of valued time off.

These six ideas are sure to help your vacation process go more smoothly.  If you haven’t written down a process for an employee to take a vacation, do it now.  It will put everyone on the same page. 

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