I remind my team about their vacation and floater days on a quarterly basis and all them to be used. All I ask for is time for me to pivot as needed and if you have ongoing projects that you reschedule planned meetings, document as you go, and ensure access is available to the rest of the team if needed.
I’ve had employees in the past who I’ve sat down and directly asked them to take time off (paid) because they were burning out and would otherwise push through it. I’ve even reminded some of available leaves of absence for situations in their personal lives.
If the business can’t continue without any one person, then the business isn’t sustainable as-is and that’s not fair to anyone. Hire more people if it’s coverage or train your people if there’s skill gaps. Documentation of systems and processes is also crucial.
If the business can’t continue without any one person, then the business isn’t sustainable as-is and that’s not fair to anyone. Hire more people if it’s coverage or train your people if there’s skill gaps. Documentation of systems and processes is also crucial.
This is it, and not only for PTO reasons. Anyone can get in an accident, get sick or resign at any time. As a manager you just cannot depend on a permanent all-hands-on-deck situation where everyone just works like a cog in the machine (as in, if one cog is missing the whole machine is down).
Running a company like that is terrible practice and a disaster waiting to happen.
Always keep the bus factor in mind (as in “how many people can get hit by a bus before the project grinds to a halt?”) and plan accordingly.
I think managers like you are important for helping cultivate perspectives that are better situated to challenge various bullshit under capitalism. Whilst some workplaces or managers actively make it difficult for people to take their earned vacation days, there are also plenty of places that will apply a passive pressure that causes people being disinclined to take time off. Working in the first kind of place can make you more vulnerable to the insidiousness of the second workplace.
Sometimes, in that second kind of workplace, when you insist on taking your vacation days, the pressure morphs into more overtime coercion, but often, there ends up being no repercussions — often, they don’t want to fight people on it, so they rely on workers effectively oppressing themselves.
The more people that are practiced at taking what they’re entitled to, the easier it is to resist shitty workplaces that try to deny us what few privileges our contracts entitle us.
I remind my team about their vacation and floater days on a quarterly basis and all them to be used. All I ask for is time for me to pivot as needed and if you have ongoing projects that you reschedule planned meetings, document as you go, and ensure access is available to the rest of the team if needed.
I’ve had employees in the past who I’ve sat down and directly asked them to take time off (paid) because they were burning out and would otherwise push through it. I’ve even reminded some of available leaves of absence for situations in their personal lives.
If the business can’t continue without any one person, then the business isn’t sustainable as-is and that’s not fair to anyone. Hire more people if it’s coverage or train your people if there’s skill gaps. Documentation of systems and processes is also crucial.
This is it, and not only for PTO reasons. Anyone can get in an accident, get sick or resign at any time. As a manager you just cannot depend on a permanent all-hands-on-deck situation where everyone just works like a cog in the machine (as in, if one cog is missing the whole machine is down).
Running a company like that is terrible practice and a disaster waiting to happen.
Always keep the bus factor in mind (as in “how many people can get hit by a bus before the project grinds to a halt?”) and plan accordingly.
I think managers like you are important for helping cultivate perspectives that are better situated to challenge various bullshit under capitalism. Whilst some workplaces or managers actively make it difficult for people to take their earned vacation days, there are also plenty of places that will apply a passive pressure that causes people being disinclined to take time off. Working in the first kind of place can make you more vulnerable to the insidiousness of the second workplace.
Sometimes, in that second kind of workplace, when you insist on taking your vacation days, the pressure morphs into more overtime coercion, but often, there ends up being no repercussions — often, they don’t want to fight people on it, so they rely on workers effectively oppressing themselves.
The more people that are practiced at taking what they’re entitled to, the easier it is to resist shitty workplaces that try to deny us what few privileges our contracts entitle us.