Why are driven employees shying away from taking time off?

There’s no question that discussion surrounding the workplace is dominated by flexible working and work-life balance and has been for quite some time. It’s everywhere, and as a result the majority of workplaces are doing everything they can to be modern, more flexible and promote an evolved work-life balance for all.

The constant evolution of the workplace has included introductions like unlimited annual leave and legislation increasing the access to flexitime and working from home. Introductions like this mean that this will remain a topic of research for some time to come while more businesses accept the changes and as we scrutinise the outcome. While the introduction of these wellbeing-enhancing perks have been widely praised as being effective and desirable, it’s been reported that around a third of employees are not taking their allotted annual leave, and only 30% of employees are actually utilising their choice to work from home. There’s no shortage of articles which discuss the problems of overworking ourselves, but it’s more crucial we understand why we can’t let ourselves relax, switch off from work and hand over our responsibilities for a bit. We need to identify the root causes of our reluctance to break the chains binding us to our desks and turn off our smartphones keeping us ever-connected to the business world. Is it down to Brexit job insecurity which has 1 in 5 of us worried, creating the need to promote ourselves as indispensable and always dependable? Is it the inability to switch off due to our digital age tying us to our smartphones and email inboxes 24/7? Or are we simply just too driven by our work? Whatever the reason, it’s crucial that we take the time off that we’re entitled to and take the time to completely separate ourselves from the job so that we don’t burn out. We came across this article from Forbes which has been written by a CEO whose company had to talk them into taking their paternity leave. John Hall, Co-Founder and CEO of Influence & Co, stresses that this article is applicable to any type of absence from work, whether it’s for maternity, paternity, annual leave and so on. From finding it difficult to place your full faith within your team to being  tentative about letting a business decision skip your input, this article helps you to recognise why it’s hard for driven people to take time off, and what you can do about it.

Take a look here to see the article and let us know what you think.