"Our employees should relax on holiday and not read work-related emails."
German car manufacturer Daimler has been in the news with its employee app that deletes emails from the inboxes of staff when they are on holiday. Employees can opt in or out of the system which has been developed so that employees can experience the 'emotional relief' of starting back at work with an empty inbox. Volkswagen has a rule in place to prevent emails being sent once shifts have finished. Deutsche Telekom and Porsche also have guidelines saying that employees are not expected to be contactable outside their work time.
Meanwhile in the UK, figures suggest that only one in three workers take all the leave they are entitled to. 44% of those surveyed admitted to working on holiday. Nearly one in five had been contacted by a colleague and 13% said their boss had contacted them. Even if they are not accessing work emails, British holidaymakers in Europe are very busy on their mobile devices. They are posting over 21 million pictures from their holidays every year; sending 44 million text messages and posting 20 million status updates on Twitter and Facebook.
Are employees right in thinking that taking all their holiday entitlement will cause them problems at work? In the US research suggests that 13% of managers are less likely to promote workers who take all of their vacation time; and employees who take less than their full vacations earn 2.8% more in the subsequent year than colleagues who took all of their allotted days.
Sources: Harvard Business Review; The Local (Germany); ITProPortal; Yahoo Finance.