How to Successfully Set Vacation Boundaries at Work: A Brief Guide to Achieving Work-Vacation Balance

It’s always been a rule for me to make sure my team takes their vacation and that during their vacation they should not be contacted, take a call or answer emails. There are exceptions to every rule but that’s for another post. But I think if you asked all the employees I have lead over the years they would say I am pretty serious about this rule. “Oh Patrick you’re such a great boss for doing this”. Well not exactly, the true reason, the intrinsic purpose behind the rule is I want the same while I am away. I love traveling and we all know that travel in itself can be stressful, let alone traveling with a child. So it makes it even more so if you add in answering emails, taking a call or what not. So it comes back to the golden rule. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,”. Simple, right?

The problem with this simple idea is that when you work at agency you work with 20, 30 or 40 people who all have different working styles. They work at different companies and have different cultures. It is seemingly impossible to align everyone of them to this simple idea. But I’ve done it and hears how.?

You simply set your boundaries. You let everyone know that you are heading on vacation, tie off as many loose ends as possible, put on your out of office message with a key contact, set your Slack to vacation mode and you just don’t respond. Eventually people get that you mean business. Once when I was much younger lad I was handed a new Blackberry (I told you I was much much younger) by my boss. It looked so shiny and new and I knew it would cost a fortune to buy it myself. However, flashes of my colleagues glued to their Blackberry’s flooded my mind. “No Thanks” I said. I knew as soon as I accepted this phone I was giving up a piece of my free time. I politely told them if you need me after hours or on the weekend you can text or call my phone. They never did. But you know who they did contact after hours and on the weekend, those who didn’t set the boundary.

All of this sounds well and good, but a lot of people don’t think they have this flexibility or ability to push back. My answer to that is you shouldn’t have to, if this is a problem then you probably found the wrong tribe. My reason for being at hedgehog lab for 8 years comes down to just a few factors. They trust me. Never have I ever been questioned or monitored my hours. But that is not a one way street. I still have to perform, do my job, grow the business, but if I am doing that the rest falls into place. Finding a team that values you and your contribution is vital. Finding a team that roots for your peace of mind during vacation is priceless. At least to me it is.

From a rested and restored soul my gratefulness to my team at hedgehog lab , my in-laws for watching our child for a few days, JetBlue and all it’s staff for getting us to paradise and back and to the 凯悦 for making our trip as restful as we hoped. It takes a village.?