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Are employees working while vacationing? Or are they vacationing while they’re working?
It can be hard to tell: 72% of employees say they work while on PTO, according to a recent survey from employee experience transformation company Perceptyx.
Working on PTO can be a sign of deeply-rooted cultural issues, said Emily Killham, senior director at Perceptyx and head of the Center for Workforce Transformation. She shared with HR Brew what people pros should know about the growing trend of “workcationing.”
What’s the deal? The Perceptyx survey identified three types of employee vacationers: Planned workcationers, unplanned workcationers, and true vacationers, Kilham told HR Brew. Planned workcationers take work devices on vacation and plan to respond to emails, while unplanned vacation workers attempt to unplug by leaving work devices at home, but end up working via personal devices.
In both scenarios, she said, employees are demonstrating a lack of boundaries between work and life. This may put them at risk for burnout, Kilham said, and even lead them down the path of “quiet vacationing.”
“The group of people who get pulled in to work on their scheduled paid vacations were also the most likely to sneak away when they needed some time off,” Kilham said. “Were they stealing company time? Or, were they making an effort to pull back some of the time that they worked while they were being paid not to?”
And managers who engage in workcationing can negatively impact their direct reports’ ability to disconnect from work, she added.
“When we looked at: ‘Does leadership encourage you to take your PTO?’ And, we looked at: ‘Does your organization encourage you to truly disconnect?’ Neither of those impacted the desire or the behavior of working on vacation,” Kilham said. “What did was: ‘[Does] your manager work on their vacation?’”
What’s HR to do? Focus on managers and their workloads, Kilham said. Managers are increasingly facing pressure “to do more with less” so HR leaders should ensure they and their employees have the space and flexibility to “actually feel like we can take off,” she added.
Say to managers, “Hey, I need you to take this number of days off, so that your employees do [the same,]” Kilham suggested. “Study what’s the right number [of PTO] within your organization to prevent things like burnout” by tracking the average number of days that employees take off across job levels and positions.
Kilham recommended conducting “listening surveys” when employees return from vacation with questions like: Were you able to disconnect? Was your work covered while you were away? What could have been better?
“When HR can start to determine what’s causing the underlying issue in their own organization, or why people are turned on [while on vacation,] I think it’s really going to help them begin to make the right policies to move forward,” she said.