When your team members are on vacation, how good are you about respecting their time off? - SmartBrief

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When your team members are on vacation, how good are you about respecting their time off?

2 min read

By Mike Figliuolo 05/26/16

Leadership

SmartPulse — our weekly nonscientific reader poll in SmartBrief on Leadership — tracks feedback from more than 160,000 business leaders. We run the poll question each Tuesday in our e-newsletter.

Last week, we asked: When your team members are on vacation, how good are you about respecting their time off?

  • I don’t contact them unless there’s an emergency: 88.36%
  • I contact them when I need important things from them: 9.28%
  • I contact them pretty frequently and leave it to them as to when they respond: 1.55%
  • I contact them constantly and expect timely responses: 0.81%

Gone fishin’. Time off is just that, and bravo to the overwhelming majority of you for recognizing the fact that your people need their R&R. We operate under enough stress as it is. Robbing people of the little peace they’re afforded on the occasional vacation borders on criminal. Not only does doing so deprive them of time to recharge their batteries, but it also adds stress because you’re likely causing conflict between the demands of their work and their desire to spend time with friends, family or just enjoying some quiet. Before you send that “urgent” e-mail to someone on vacation, ask whether it’s really all that important.

Mike Figliuolo is managing director of thoughtLEADERS and author of “One Piece of Paper: The Simple Approach to Powerful, Personal Leadership.”