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.

This week, Paladin participated in the Heartland Mobile Council’s MobileU101 conference. As companies awake to “the year of mobile,” this event discussed strategic approaches to mobile marketing.  But is this really the time of mobile?

Motorola’s Dana Warszona, a panelist, said the mobile tipping point for Japan came about 4 years earlier compared to the US. She and her fellow panelists Andrew Koven, President, E-Commerce & Customer Experience, Steve Madden Shoes and Julie Krueger, Senior Vice President, eCommerce and Direct, OfficeMax felt that the US is just now at that point. They stressed that for retail companies, in particular, this is the time to pull the infrastructure together and to get smart on mobile and to do it quickly. Two-thirds of retailers are already doing mobile or in the midst of implementing it.

They advise moving away from simply the siloed campaign and to develop mobile as a part ongoing strategy and business operation. For consumers mCommerece is coming and it will mean that cash registers and credit cards will become obsolete. Krueger said that mobile will do away with kiosks and that the in-store experience will change radically. Warszona pointed to Best Buy as example of a company that was truly tying mobile into their business operations.

Koven said, “Mobile is the second coming and we’re [Steve Madden Shoes are] going to lead. We’re not going to wait and see.” 

How are these initiative being done? Krueger said that companies are not yet investing in additional human resources needed for mobile. Her current teams are adding it to their work load. But as the tide turns and mobile heats up, we will see companies ramp up the internal resources needed to manage this growth.

Staff, roles and ownership for mobile were reoccurring discussions during the conference. Which departments should own the mobile marketing strategy or execution? Will marketing generalist take mobile marketing on as an additional tool in their tool belt or is mobile best developed and managed by specialists? As Mobile Marketing emerges, we look forward to following this debate and the trends.  We would like your input on the topic. To weigh in, please take our poll - http://tinyurl.com/2bfolsr . We will be happy to share the results with you.

Here are a few recent articles and links related to mobile marketing:

 Mobile Marketers: Just Do Something

Chicago mobile event highlights opportunities of mobile marketing

Heartland Mobile Council

What Apple’s Acquisition of Siri Means for the Future of Mobile Search

Twitter Stream from the event

I wish I thought of this question, but I read it in a feature article on the acclaimed French actress, Juliet Binoche. She said it was her favorite question to ask fellow artists. In this age of distractions, I find it hard to answer for myself.

I worked from home the other day and with the exception of occasional frenzied barking from my dogs, some phone calls, and beeps from my laptop, I spent the day in relative silence. I emailed my colleague toward the end of the day and said I felt calm. I also felt satisfied with my work day and what I had accomplished.

Calm is not a state many of us are in these days. Whether you’re in a job, worried about your job, or looking for a job, these are stressful times. So what is our relationship with silence? Could examining that relationship and stepping inside of it actually bring us a bit of peace?

A lot my own noise is self-inflicted. I’m on Facebook, carry a BlackBerry and a personal cell, own an ipod, watch TV on demand, and have 2 email accounts that I check constantly. I set up a twitter account but haven’t used it yet. Sometimes the only silence I find myself in are the moments before I fall asleep. My toothbrush even makes noise.

The day I worked from home was a revelation. I got a lot done ( my boss edits this), but seriously, I was focused and efficient. I don’t want to work alone, or retreat from an active, busy life, but I do want the calm I felt at the end of that day, and I’m pretty sure it had to do with the silence I experienced for 8 hours.  As I write this in my kitchen, my husband unpacks groceries and makes sandwiches for my daughter and her friend. It’s noisy and hectic one minute and the next it’s quiet again as the girls move to another room to eat and the only sounds now are the humming of a dishwasher. Do we capture the quiet when we can? Do we add our quest for silence to an ever ending to do list like working out, and then feel guilty when we fail to be quiet? Is our technical life too hard to pull away from?

I dont’ know yet, I’m just starting to examine my relationship with silence, the only thing I’m pretty sure of is that like most meaningful relationships, you might not know what you’ve got til it’s gone.