« Blog Home

The Value of Time- 2nd of 2

Second in Series

Many companies transpose the terms “vacation” time with any type of time off, and so do employees for that matter. I’ve heard of countless corporate executives brag about not having taken a vacation in five years! Now when I hear this I immediately think of my experience in the past year. It certainly never occurred to me that I was “on vacation!” If companies realized that blocks of time given to an employee will return to them ten-fold in a rejuvenated, energized, and knowledgeable approach to their work, they may be more encouraging.  Of course there is a fear on both sides: On the employer side, they are afraid that they can’t do without that employee or executive for a length of time, and that the individual might “lose their edge”; and on the employee side, they may be fearful that they will be forgotten or replaced.

In order to ease the anxiety and incorporate this gift of time into corporate culture, I have a few suggestions:

  1. Employers should clearly separate vacation or personal time and sabbatical time. And the employer should clearly communicate the purpose of the sabbatical and why it is encouraged in the company.
  2. The employer can present a loose set of guidelines on how to spend the time away, such as writing a book, attending a series of executive education classes or industry events, spending time shadowing a colleague in a non-competing company to receive some “out-of-the-box” ideas and practices.  The employee can present ideas as well.
  3. The lines of communication between the employee and employer can remain open, but only in a limited sense. “My time spent with John at his manufacturing facility these past few weeks has given me some great ideas on how we can implement some new procedures for maximizing our efficiencies. I’m excited to share them with you and the team!” This will help both the company and the employee feel like they are still a part of the organization.

I truly hope that more and more, both companies and employees alike will receive the benefits that I did, and experience the value of time.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 5th, 2009 at 10:41 am and is filed under Blog . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Leave a Reply