How to ensure you give your colleagues and yourself a real holiday

I can admit it. I was a workaholic and this isn’t to glorify it, it is simply what it is. This meant I prided myself on being pretty much always available. I never counted the cost of every call or email, when it dragged me out of half-relaxation.

I even devised a system for when I was holiday. SOS in the subject line meant that I needed to read the email immediately. (I still think it’s a clever system but should be done once you are back in the office to highlight things that might need more urgent attention).

Today is my first day back working properly, having just come back from a holiday, where I really took time out. I didn’t do more than I wanted to and just took the time to enjoy it. That is when it really sunk in, what a holiday is meant to be.

When I was an employee, I can see that there were two things wrong in my previous situation. I was wrong for offering my time and my colleagues were wrong for taking me up on the offer. Nothing that happens in the workplace should require you being disturbed on your holiday.?

With effective handovers, colleagues to cover it should all be fine and even in an "end of business" scenario, you can’t do anything about it anyway.

What does it say about an organisation’s culture if we feel scared to be out of touch for 2 weeks, I can't even begin with the topic of parental leave?

But what does it also say about the culture, if we feel no way about intruding on our colleagues' holiday, during the time that they are meant to be resting and recharging?

?3 things to bear in mind during this upcoming holiday period:

1.?????Don’t plan important meetings without notice and if it has to happen, then organise the meeting and send an email?to missing participants to give more information.

2.????Holidayers: Before you offer yourself being okay to accept calls, remember that once you give the always available signal, that will be your benchmark and going back will be seen as giving less. Once the door is open you can’t close it.

3.????Those still in the office: It doesn’t matter how often they’ve said it is okay, DO NOT email. Ask yourself how you would solve it if they weren’t in the office.

?Small actions can still make a huge difference.

?We all need a break, so we should give ourselves as well everyone else the chance to switch off, digitally detox from work and come back rested.

Without good people there are no successful organisations.

#culture

#success ?

#bestpracticg

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Leanne Mair is the Founder and Managing Director of?Benefactum Consulting , a consultancy focussed on accelerating gender equity in the workplace, the Founder of Black Women Parlay, a private network for future-forward Black women and the Co-Founder of?The Sororum, ?a CIC dedicated to supporting first-generation female professionals moving into the workplace.