Take a Real Summer Vacation: Sever the High-tech Tethers

Many Americans just can’t take a real vacation. Even when they do leave the office, they often take the office with them.

Cell phones, laptop computers and Palm Pilots can wreck a good vacation. These “?high-tech tethers” are touted as a way to stay in touch with the office, but for a relaxing vacation, that’s the last thing an employee needs to do.

“?It detracts from the quality of their vacation,” said Dan Ganster, the Charles C. Fichtner professor of management at the University of Arkansas. “?There are some people who don’t detach when they go on vacation.”

Those employees return to work feeling like they haven’t had a vacation at all. And that can be detrimental to health, relationships and mental well being. The key, Ganster said, is to “?have a good time and get detached from work.”

A survey of small-business owners conducted by American Express Corp. earlier this year found that 57 percent planned to check with their companies at least once a day while on vacation. Twenty-two percent said they would check several times a day while another 22 percent said they wouldn’t check at all.

“?I’m surprised it’s only 57 percent,” Ganster said. “?I’m surprised there are small-business owners who don’t check back every day.”

Vacation Culture

At many companies, employees feel they can’t take a vacation without toting a big bag of guilt with them.

Faced with a barrage of labor-related lawsuits, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. of Bentonville announced on June 4 that it was implementing new tactics to get employees to take time off, even if it’s just for a lunch break. If a Wal-Mart cashier doesn’t take off for lunch, their computer will shut down and notify the manager.

Tyson Foods Inc. of Springdale, the world’s largest meat producer, has a liberal vacation policy, said Ed Nicholson, a company spokesman. Tyson Foods actually makes employees take time off.

“?It goes up to four weeks depending on length of service,” Nicholson said of the company’s vacation time. “?Anyone with two weeks or over is required to take those 10 days consecutively because we feel you need to get away. You need to do something that gets you away ? wherever your favorite fishing hole is.”

The difference between the vacation attitudes at Wal-Mart and Tyson Foods is reflected in the corporate culture of the two companies.

Sam Walton, Wal-Mart’s founder who died in 1992, was a notoriously hard-working man who required employees at the home office to work every other Saturday. Even now, Wal-Mart employees arrive early and stay late. The parking lot at the home office is half-full by 6 a.m. and still completely packed at 6 p.m. every day.

Don Tyson, retired senior chairman of Tyson Foods, obviously worked hard, but he had the reputation for playing hard as well. Tyson often took fishing trips off the coast of Mexico or vacationed in England, where he owns a house.

Even though the philosophy is different, the two men created two of the most successful companies in the world.

Fight or Flight

Many studies have been conducted on job stress and vacation. Most of them say vacation eases stress, at least for a while.

Connie Tyne, executive director of the Cooper Wellness Program in Dallas, a fitness and stress-management center, said stress may contribute to 85 percent of all medical problems and that 52 percent of executives will die because of stress-related diseases. But, she added, just about all diseases are stress-related.

Stress causes a weakening of the immune system, Tyne said.

“?Most people find that their particular system is going to fail at it’s weakest link,” she said, “?and that’s where hereditary factors come in.”

In other words, if you’re stressed and have a family history of cancer, you might be lowering your resistance to that illness.

Heart disease, in particular, seems to have a strong stress component. One study found that people who get less than five hours of sleep twice a week or more were 300 percent more likely to have a heart attack. Their overall rate of developing heart disease is twice as high as that of their less-stressed colleagues.

Another study indicated women who took two vacations a year were 50 percent less likely to have coronary heart disease.

Tyne said one study indicated workers who took all their accrued vacation time lived up to eight years longer than employees who didn’t.

“?It’s a win-win,” she said. “?You get to have your vacation and live out your whole life.”

Stress causes a release of norepinephrine, cortisol and adrenaline in the body, causing sugar to surge and the heart to pound. That prompts a fight-or-flight response, an evolutionary mechanism that’s supposed to save us from wild animals and warring tribes.

“?Stress, physiologically, is a very adaptive mechanism that’s supposed to help you do things to survive,” Tyne said. “?After three or four days [of high stress], we are prone to crash.”

Nature didn’t intend for us to go through all that stress every day. But for many executives, every day is like a day in the jungle of jangled nerves.

“?The first line of defense is to create some healthy and flexible boundaries between real life and relaxation time,” Tune said. Most people don’t have a boundary. They take the laptop and Palm Pilot home with them and e-mail someone in Taiwan.”

History of Vacation

The idea of taking a vacation is fairly new.

“?In the 18th century, the Protestant work ethic was that any time away from work was bad,” Ganster said. “?It was idleness, and it led to sin.”

In those days, the Sabbath was for prayer and worship, not for leisure activities, he said. The idea of taking a vacation didn’t take root until the mid-19th century. At that time, the U.S. economy was overwhelmingly agrarian, and it remained that way until the mid-20th century.

On farms, people often worked seven days a week. But in the 1920s, unions were lobbying in the cities for a five-day work week.

In the 1930s, researchers began studying short “?respites,” such as coffee breaks.

“?What they found in those early studies,” Ganster said, “?is that brief breaks from work were helpful. They actually improved effort and performance back on the job.”

Later, research found that vacations were also valuable for employee performance, but Ganster said, after about three days back at work, most employees were right back where they were as far as stress is concerned.

“?You start seeing a pattern of return to pre-vacation levels of stress after three to four days,” he said.

If a vacation is a negative experience, the worker can return to the office feeling more stressed than before he left. So try to avoid vacationing like Chevy Chase did in the movie “?Vacation.”

“?It’s really important what happens during a vacation,” Ganster said. “?It has to be a positive experience.”

Vacation in the U.S.A.

The average American takes 10.2 days of vacation per year. And workers in the United States aren’t guaranteed a vacation by law like they are in most industrialized countries.

Even in notoriously hard-working Japan, employees have a legal right to 10 days off and take an average of almost 18 vacation days a year, according to research compiled last year by ABC News.

With the economy stressed, Americans seem less inclined to take time off the job.

In one recent study, about half of 730 executives surveyed said they wouldn’t use all of their vacation time last year. The main reason? Their workloads were too heavy to allow them to take the time off.

The American work ethic has long been touted as the secret to the nation’s usually thriving economy. But some economists don’t believe the long hours are paying off in increased productivity, ABC reported.

Several workers-rights groups have formed to lobby for legislation to require mandatory vacation time in the United States.

“When millions of hard-working Americans are afraid to take their vacations for fear they will be replaced or bypassed for promotions if they do so, we have to have the protective recourse of a law,” Joe Robinson wrote in his book “Work to Live: The Guide to Getting a Life.”

Robinson is the organizer of the Work to Life Campaign. He believes companies could cross train employees to do a variety of tasks. That way, when one leaves for vacation, other employees could take up the slack.

Vacation Daze

Here’s a comparion of vacation by country:

Country —? Days Off By Law —? Average Taken

Sweden —?25 —?25-35
Austria —?25 —? 30
Denmark —?25 —?30
Germany —?24 —?30
Italy —?20 —?30
Norway —?21 —?30
Spain —?25 —?30
France —?25 —?25-30
Switzerland —?20 —?25-30
Ireland —?20 —?28
Australia —?20 —?25
Finland —?24 —?25
Netherlands —?20 —?25
Portugal —?22 —?25
U.K. —?20 —?25
Belgium —?20 —?24
Greece —?20 —?23
Japan —?10 —?17.5
China —?15 —? 15
U.S. —?0 —?10.2