I’ve just returned from a managers meeting at our corporate HQ. While there, we covered lots of the topics expected - sales, management, hiring, best practices, how to grow and mentor a team etc.  But one of the most surprising topics covered was - vacations.

I am one of those managers who is guilty of putting off  vacation time until the end of the year and then not being able to use it.  l do like folks that put in tons of hours and are fully engaged in their roles at work.  But also I have also seen the effects of burn-out. I have learned over time - that taking time off is, in fact, an important element in keeping employees performing at their best.  So I thought I would share the research finding I received from our communications team.

Time Off

If you’ve been handing out an unspoken pat on the back to employees that work more than 40 hours each week and rarely take vacation, you’re likely not alone. According to the American Workplace Insights survey conducted by Harris Interactive:

• 57% of employees do not expect their employer to encourage vacation use.
• 58% believe their employers likely won’t offer flexible work hours this year.

It’s time to rethink your strategy. All work and no play may or may not lead to dull employees, but it will directly and negatively impact your bottom line. The following are a list of eight reasons to encourage your employees’ regular use of paid vacation:

1. Put a cap on accrued vacation payables. When an employee’s unused vacation time is allowed to accrue for an extended period of time, employers are left holding the bag if that employee leaves the company or suddenly decides to take many weeks at one time. A “use-it-or-lose-it” policy encourages employees to use their earned vacation time within the calendar year, and protects your balance sheet from an unlimited or unexpected payout.
2. Rested workers result in reduced premiums. The hallmarks of workaholism include fatigue, poor health, and stress, all of which lead to an increase in worker’s compensation and health insurance costs. Keep your employees healthier and safer while minimizing the premiums you pay, by enforcing necessary breaks in engagement and regular time off.
3. Increase output with higher productivity and accuracy levels. Studies have shown that productive, successful employees are those who take vacation and occasional time off to relax, rejuvenate and refresh. Upon return from vacation, their renewed sense of drive and determination can provide both short-term and long-term boosts in productivity. Additionally, the necessary rest and replenishment will help them avoid costly mistakes, which overworked employees are more apt to make.
4. Employees that get away are more likely to stick around. When you consider the total cost of recruiting, hiring and training new employees, turnover expenses can be devastating. Help improve employee morale when you facilitate, and even encourage, employee retention through the use of vacation time and an environment that supports employee-centered work hours.
5. A change of scenery promotes ingenuity. Hum-drum routine rarely leads to inspired thinking. When on vacation, we often find ourselves in a new environment, and going through different routines. By being forced to behave and think differently for a period of time, we gain fresh perspective, creative inspiration, and new ideas. It is impossible to put a dollar value on the innovation and ingenuity that will result for your company when you encourage your employees to take vacation as a sabbatical.
6. Happy employees minimize risk and adversity. The ever-elusive office culture – you tout it to recruits, but do you really understand its value? Overworked employees are cranky employees, and are often the cause of infighting as well as office politics. They are more likely to berate their boss, resent coworkers that don’t work as hard as they do, and even resent the job itself. Your entire office, and its work product, suffers the effects of an overworked employee. You can prevent unnecessary crankiness on your team by simply making it clear that working long hours and foregoing vacation are not the way to get ahead.
7. Reduce unplanned outages. Overworked employees may take fewer vacation days off, but the tradeoff is that they likely will require more sick days. Additionally, if your employees are nervous about how you will react to their vacation request, they will be more likely to procrastinate – leaving little time for a back-up plan – or even play hooky. Conversely, employees who feel open to use their vacation time at their discretion will more proactively plan for their outages and have fewer sick days. Foster an environment that supports your employees’ efforts to balance work and their personal lives through paid time off, and the result will be loyal employees that won’t leave you hanging.
8. Detect and deter fraud by interrupting individual controls. According to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners’ (ACFE) 2010 Report to the Nations, a typical organization will lose 5% of its annual revenue to occupational fraud and abuse. Fraudulent behavior often requires complete control over an activity by one or more persons to cover up the paper trail, and is difficult to maintain while out of the office for a week or more. In fact, refusal to take vacation was one of the key red flag behaviors identified by the ACFE in their study. While the reality of these statistics is unpleasant, companies must acknowledge the need for a required vacation policy to help detect, and ideally deter, any existing or potential fraudulent behavior.

We have the pleasure of welcoming our newest addition to the Paladin Team and the new voice of Paladin - Cindy-Lee Pijoos. Cindy is taking over my role as Recruitment Coordinator. She will be the point person for our working Associates and initial inquiries from Candidates and Clients.

Cindy’s story about finding Paladin is a classic case study for how social networking can help you find a job. Recruiters, mentors, bloggers, and even Forbes continuously buzz about personal branding and networking through online communities to find a job. After reviewing Paladin’s postings online, she contacted me through a direct message on Twitter. Her social media savvy gained her an interview, and her experience and professionalism won her the role.

Cindy graduated with an integrated marketing communications degree in PR. She comes to us originally from Cape Town, South Africa and has lived in various cities before settling in Chicago. She thoroughly enjoys volunteering, cooking, and networking - so be sure to introduce yourself at the next event.

As we welcome Cindy as the new face and voice of Paladin, I am personally taking the next step in my career. I have recently accepted a position in social media, which will be a new challenge I am very excited to take on. My passion for interactive, online marketing has spooled through my experience at Paladin. I am happy to have had a chance to hone my social media experience in my Paladin role and look forward to staying a part of the extended Paladin family!

Lately, I’ve been reminded that business Web sites often come in one of two flavors.  Perhaps you can recognize them:

1. What we do – These are sites that focus on attracting business.  They devote most of their pages to describing their services, human capital resources, success stories and the like.
2. Who we are – These are the sites that have chosen to focus on attracting talent.  A significant percentage of the site is devoted to recruiting, so they showcase the work experience, profiles of their office locations and career opportunities.

These are broad brush-strokes and there’s nothing inherently wrong with either approach.  Of course, some overlap occurs when talking about the work experience (showing a potential client how thorough you are) or describing your services (showing potential recruits the level of impact they can have).  Many sites dedicate space to both services and recruiting.  But they could be so much more.

The best sites offer a third option, one that combines the flavors above with a way that keeps clients, prospects and potential new hires coming back again and again.

The knowledge site

Call it the Neapolitan solution because it’s three flavors in one – services, recruiting and knowledge.

The difference, of course, is in what knowledge you make available.  The idea is to make the knowledge you share valuable and useful without giving away the store.  Give them just enough new information on a regular basis – or provide access to a database of information if that aligns with what you do – to whet the appetite or keep you top of mind when the time comes to actually purchase your services.

If you’re a design firm, for example, you could offer case studies on how good designs have made a difference between success and failure in a campaign, or offer tips for how to approach branding, color or layout.

Professional services firms can present examples of best practices in operational efficiency or performance management.  Publishing companies can offer reviews and insights culled from their latest editions.  Industry news, white papers, articles, summaries of round table events – the opportunities to position your organization as a valuable resource are endless.

This isn’t a difficult or particularly new concept but for some reason it’s a rare one to see being utilized.  But examples can be found: just look at what Paladin is doing by publishing these blogs.

What kind of a Web site are you?

It’s not easy to do this.  It takes imagination, management appetite, resources and, just as important, maintenance.  It takes collaboration over the long haul to create the content and promote its existence on a regular basis.

It’s long past time when a company could get away with being an electronic brochure.  The war for talent and the fight for business demand that you reach out to clients and prospects – or give them a reason to reach out to you.

Small businesses are especially vulnerable these days and are looking for ideas to generate revenue.  The good news is that those ideas are right in front of them, in the knowledge gained through the experience of their people, the tools they use, and the services they provide.  The not-so-good news is now that knowledge needs to be transformed into a format where it can be shared.

But it can be done.

Do you have any examples of favorite sites that exemplify the Neapolitan approach?  Remember what your mother said about sharing…

Take the red pill.

In fact, take it now before you really need it.  That’s the lesson I’ve learned about networking.

In The Matrix, our hero is given a choice: take a blue pill and continue on with his life or take the red pill and see life as it really is.  Of course, he takes the red pill (wouldn’t be much of a movie if he didn’t), the veil is lifted and he becomes aware of things that were always there but never seen.

Lately I’ve begun to build on my own network of friends and professional colleagues, coaxing it to take form, and develop.  Actually, I’m helping it grow.  The network was always there; I just never saw it.  Then I took the red pill.

It was April 2006 when I was first asked to join a friend’s network through LinkedIn.  Sounded like fun and a good way to stay in touch with people.  But I rarely looked at it.  The next request came in October 2007.  I was flattered someone would ask me to join a network and, yeah, I felt hip.

But it wasn’t until this past February that I began to build my network in earnest.  I had to; my role had been eliminated and along with so many others folks I was in the market for a new position.

As so many at Paladin attest, you’ve got to get out and network.  This may seem rather obvious but it isn’t something all of us do when we’re employed.  Of course, some roles – from sales to marketing to politics – require networking and maintaining relationships to achieve their goals.  Networking within the organization was key to my last role.

Many job descriptions, however, do not ask you to stay in touch with people who don’t directly affect you or your work.

Because so many people are new to this networking gig, it seemed like a good idea to ask some friends from my network what they have learned along the way.   This list is by no means comprehensive, but it is road tested:

• Get out of the house – My friend Buzz put it as a simple, Nike-esque rule: “You just gotta be out there!  Go out and go to things anytime you can.”

It’s okay, everybody’s doing it.  And by “it,” I mean looking for work.  Here’s the yin and the yang of it: We all know that this isn’t the best time in the history of humankind to be looking for work.  On the other hand, the stigma of being out of work isn’t what it used to be, not when so many people are in the same position.  There’s no shame in being unemployed but somehow it seems a little easier to say “I’m in transition” when the headlines are always talking about yet another round of lay offs.  Just ask all of those former headline writers.

• Don’t be so shy – Of course, once you’re out of the house you’ve got to meet people.  “People want to help,” as my friend Katherine put it, but don’t make it difficult for them.  Give them your personal marketing plan or your newly updated resume to review.  Suggest meeting for coffee so there’s an understanding that the meeting doesn’t have to last for hours.  (And note that just because you say “Let’s meet for coffee” doesn’t mean you need to drink coffee at every meeting – especially if you have several lined up in one day.  Trust me on this one.)

Job seekers and their friends might want to read this article in The New York Times that provides some suggestions for how to give and receive help.  “The most important corollary to this rule,” Katherine points out, “is to thank people for their time and respect their schedules.”

• Be prepared – It’s not just for Boy Scouts anymore.  “Never show up unprepared even for a quick networking meeting,” said Katherine.  “You have to do your research in advance, or you waste people’s time.”  This means knowing about your contact’s business and providing something for them to use (which can be as simple as meaningful article referrals, for example, suggests Leslie).

• Back to basics – It’s all about the prompt follow-up and the personalized, hand-written thank you notes.  Making sure to write down unique reminder information on business cards. (“No,” says Leslie, “you won’t remember who all those folks are when you’re sitting in front of your computer doing the follow-up.”)

• Don’t just do something, stand there – “A lot of people don’t know how to listen,” says Buzz.  It’s not that you just sit back and watch the show.  “If you ask somebody for help, shut up and listen!  Don’t ask for advice and then overwhelm someone with your expertise!”

Here’s a surprise: You’ve already started.  As I mentioned earlier, my network was always there.  Sure, it was a little fallow and needed some tending and weeding.  But at the risk of taking this gardening metaphor too far, let’s just say you’ve bought the land already; employed or not, you need to start tilling the soil.

At a meeting of job seekers I attended, one participant put the benefits of networking this way: “I’ve lived in Chicago for 20 years.  Now it seems like a small town.”

Take the red pill.

Contributed by: Frank McGee
Business writer, trainer, coach