Taking a vacation in silence is a passé. Now, it’s time to take a vacation in silence, a recent lifestyle trend that is especially catching on among millennials. According to Harris Poll – an American market research and analysis company that conducts surveys – 37 percent of people in the US have admitted to having taken a vacation without requesting or telling their boss!
Worried about asking leave from boss
According to the survey, the problem is not the leave policy. The problem lies in the workplace culture and workload pressure. The survey mentions that pressure to be available and heavy workloads are the biggest barriers to taking more time off, and in a tight economic market, Gen Z and Millennials fear employer response and career implications. This is why many employers are taking breaks, albeit secretly, to maintain their work-life balance.
What is quiet vacationing and why is it becoming popular?
So it’s like a workcation, but employees are pretending to work from home. A Harris Poll survey states that 65% of U.S. employees say they “find it challenging to balance work commitments and personal leisure.” 76% said they wish their “workplace culture placed more emphasis on the value of taking regular breaks and using paid vacation.” In an environment where telling your employees you need a vacation to recharge your batteries seems difficult, many do it stealthily. They fly to a vacation destination and work from there, often adjusting their schedules to accommodate their vacation aspirations. 38% of millennial employees “moved their mouse” to maintain online status on the company’s messaging system, while 37% of millennial employees schedule messages outside of regular hours to give the impression they are working extra hours.
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Quiet Holidays: The Story of India
So what is the situation in India? Though no survey has been conducted yet, many young professionals admit that they have taken leave even though they should have been “working from home”. “Our company gives us over 20 days of earned leave in addition to casual and sick leave. But if you ask for time off, my manager makes a lot of excuses. Sometimes, even if they are not outright refusing, their attitude shows that they are not happy. So some of my colleagues and I have gone to places like Dehradun, Landour and even Goa even though we were supposedly working from home,” says Pranjal Tiwari (name changed), a business analyst from Delhi. “It’s not that we shirked work, but we managed to go on a holiday without asking for it,” he adds.
Sonali Shah from Mumbai said, “I work in a content development company and I needed a few days off to visit my hometown Patiala as my friend was visiting from abroad. But if I had given this reason, my boss would not have allowed me to go. I was working from home but my company has made it mandatory for us to stay at our place and they don’t allow working from remote locations unless there is an emergency. I didn’t want to go through all the trouble of making excuses but I decided to ‘work from home’ from my hometown for that one week.”
