Do you vacate?
As the summer comes to a close I was remembering an interesting conversation the other day about vacations and the necessity of them. Granted there are hundreds, of not thousands, of articles that talk about the need to unwind for a week and forget about the daily grind.
Is this possible in today’s world…..what about in today’s economy? Possibly it depends on your job. Can an architect decided to take a week off even though his/her client is waiting for sketches? Do we work double time the week before vacation to make up for the time we will be out of the office?
This got me to thinking about the root word, vacate.
Do you really vacate on your vacation….or do you walk around with the blackberry, yelling at the kids not to get it wet? Do you put your suntan lotion on with one hand, so the other is free to scroll down your email?
If any of the above sounds like you, it might be time to rethink your vacation. Maybe summer is not the best time to get away from work. I know dozens of company’s who slow down the week after Christmas; this may be a better time to vacate.
As a recruiter for consulting engineering, landscape architecture, and architecture firms, one of complaints and reasons why employees are possibly looking to make a change is due to the lack of availability [read: acceptance] for the person to take a vacation.
With careful planning and communication to your architects or engineers, vacations can go smoothly and be encouraged; fringe benefit – your employees will want to stay with your firm.
