笨老板把员工当驴，聪明老板给员工放假

面对现实吧，你需要休息一阵子了。如果你高风亮节地选择了不休假，那就是白白地浪费了一笔钱（毕竟带薪休假也是工资福利的一部分）。与此同时，随着你的小本本上的待办事项清单越来越长，你疲惫的大脑也很难想出什么新点子。就算想出来了，也没有力气去执行它们。更重要的是，如果你内心渴望逃离工作，但是又无能为力，最终等待你的可能就是抑郁症。

于是你的下一站就是精神病院，当然不会有人想到那儿去。

由民调机构易普索公共事务公司（Ipsos Public Affair）为美国安联全球救援公司（Allianz Global Assistance USA）进行的一项调查显示，长期不休假的工作与抑郁症之间存在密切联系。自从2009年以来，安联每年春季都会对1000名成年上班族就以下问题进行调查：第一，你们是否认为休假对你们的幸福感很重要？第二，你们是否有确切的休假计划，或者在此前12个月里已经休过假了？有些人认为休假很重要，但又因为种种原因休不了，这种人的境遇又被研究人员称为“假期赤字”。

在最近一次调查中，受访者还填写了一份简短的PHQ-9调查问卷——医学界常常使用该调查问卷判断抑郁症的症状。比如他们是否对日常生活失去了兴趣，是否感到失败和绝望，是否有失眠、食欲不振、注意力难以集中等问题。

“假期赤字”与PHQ-9的分数之间展现了令人吃惊的相关性。约三分之一（30%）遭遇“假期赤字”的受访者出现了轻度到中度抑郁的迹象。更值得重视的是，美国人口中患严重临床抑郁症的比例约为6%，而在“假期赤字”人群中，这一比例却翻了一倍，达到12%。在那些高度重视休假，但是最后一次休假的时间是在“两年多以前”的人中，半数以上PHQ-9的分数高得吓人，表明他们患有严重的抑郁症。

其实谁都知道，每年休一两周的假，将所有工作抛在一边，无论对身体健康还是对工作效率都十分重要。但是大家为什么不愿意休假呢？研究显示，通常并非是老板不愿意让我们休假。（一项研究表明，只有3%的管理者不鼓励下属休假。）然而同事的态度就说不准了。两年前，安联曾经对美国人计划休假时的心态进行过调查，结果发现，在各个年龄段的受访者中，都有25%的人表示自己有紧张和内疚等负面情绪。这种负面情绪在“千禧一代”中甚至更普遍，达到了37%。

安联公司的董事丹尼尔·杜拉索已经连续10年负责这项休假调查了。他表示：“人们对于自己休假期间让同事干更多工作感到很愧疚。不过留下来干活的同事们对此是否真的介意，抑或人们只担心他们会介意，我们并不知道。”

市场营销公司Acceleration Partners的创始人及首席执行官鲍勃·格雷泽找到了一个解决问题的办法。他表示：“休假是一个让人们学习如何提前分配和计划工作的好机会。我们想打造这样一个体系，如果你不在的话，总有人可以代替你的工作；别人不在的时候，你也能顶上他们的空缺。这已经成了我们的文化的一部分。”

为了达到这个目标，格雷泽希望他的员工休假期间彻底不要操心工作的事，甚至与公司完全断掉联系。Acceleration Partners公司的休假时间是没有上限的，“但大家就是不休假。”就算员工去休假了，他们也会通过网络远程工作，休了还不如不休。

所以从去年开始，格雷泽挂出奖赏，谁能在休假期间彻底与公司失联，不回邮件、不接电话、不参加远程会议，并且得到充分、彻底的休息，就可以拿到750美元的奖金。在公司的150多名员工中，大约有一半已经拿到了这笔奖金。格雷泽表示：“在紧急情况下，大家会告诉同事，如何能够通过短信或者非工作号码联系到他们。但到目前为止，这种‘紧急状况’从没有真正发生过。”

偶尔让别人替你做工作，还有另外一个好处——那就是雪亮的“群众之眼”。Acceleration Partners的澳大利亚高级客户经理米歇尔·卡利诺夫斯基指出，在你休假期间，替你工作的同事“也有机会做一些新的事情，他们说不定还可以找到更好的方法来做这件事情。”去年卡利诺夫斯基就休了两次假，每次10天。在一次休假期间，顶替她的同事对她的工作做了一些调整，将团队的一项日常任务精简了一个小时的时间。卡利诺夫斯基表示：“这个新方法要快得多了，给我们节省了很多时间。”

当然，不是每个老板都愿意给休假期间玩失踪的人额外发工资。不过格雷泽指出，他有很多好点子都是休假期间或是坐在某个海滩上时想出来的。他相信，如果公司能够让员工在工作之外有自己的生活，包括让他们通过休假来洗刷疲惫的身心，给自己充电，公司的效率（以及人才保留率）就会大幅提高。格雷泽表示：“企业文化的重点，就在于你鼓励员工去做什么。如果你鼓励员工不间断地工作，大家就只好这样去做。”但是在长期来看，这样做的效果不可能会好。（财富中文网）

译者：朴成奎

Let’s face it, you need some time off. Not only are you leaving money on the table by not taking vacations (which are, after all, part of your compensation) but, as your already humongous to-do list keeps getting longer, it’s harder to come up with fresh ideas, or the energy to execute them. What’s more, if you yearn to get away and haven’t felt able to, you may be headed for a nasty case of clinical depression.

Next stop: Burnout City. And nobody wants to go there.

A strong link between nonstop work and depression turns up in a fascinating study, conducted by pollsters Ipsos Public Affairs for Allianz Global Assistance USA. Every spring since 2009, Allianz has surveyed 1,000 working adults and asked, first, whether they consider vacations important to their well-being and, second, whether they have definite plans to get away, or have done so in the preceding 12 months. People who rate the importance of vacations highly, but say they are unlikely to get one, are suffering what the researchers call a “vacation deficit.”

Here’s the twist: In the most recent survey, respondents also filled out a short questionnaire called a PHQ-9, which the medical profession uses to identify symptoms of clinical depression—including loss of interest or pleasure in daily life, feelings of failure or hopelessness, insomnia, loss of appetite, and trouble concentrating.

The correlation between “vacation deficit” and PHQ-9 scores is startling. Consider: About one in three (30%) of people reporting a “vacation deficit” showed signs of mild to moderate depression. It gets worse. An estimated 6% of the U.S. population suffers from severe clinical depression. Among non-vacationers, the percentage doubles to 12%. Among people who rated the importance of time off highly but said their last vacation was “more than two years ago,” over half (56%) showed sky-high PHQ-9 scores, indicating severe depression.

It’s pretty well-known by now that getting away from it all for a week or two is essential for both physical health and productivity, so why do we hesitate to do it? Research suggests it’s not usually bosses who stand in the way. (One study found that only 3% of managers discourage their direct reports from using their vacation time.) Coworkers, however, might be a different story. Two years ago, the Allianz survey asked people to describe how they felt about scheduling a breather. About 25% of Americans in every age group—and even more millennials (37%)—reported negative emotions, like nervousness and guilt.

“People felt especially guilty about leaving colleagues with extra work to do in their absence,” says Daniel Durazo, the Allianz director who has overseen these vacation studies for the past 10 years. “But whether coworkers who would be picking up the slack really will mind, or whether people just fear they will, we really don’t know.”

Bob Glazer, founder and CEO of marketing firm Acceleration Partners, has found a way to moot that question. “Vacations are a great chance for people to learn how to delegate and plan ahead,” he says. “We want to create a system where there is always someone else who can do your job if you’re not around, and you can do theirs. It’s become part of our culture.”

To build that bench strength, Glazer wants his employees not just to take off, but to stay offline, and completely out of touch with the office, while they’re gone. Although Acceleration Partners has an unlimited-vacation policy, “people just weren’t using it,” he says—or, if they did go away, they checked in to work electronically so often that they might just as well have stayed there.

So last year, Glazer started paying $750 to anyone who disappears on a real, relaxing getaway: No answering emails, for instance, or fielding phone calls, or sitting in on teleconferences. About half of his 150 staffers worldwide have taken him up on it. “In case of an emergency, people tell their colleagues how to reach them by text on a non-work phone,” Glazer says. “But so far, that’s never actually happened.”

One benefit of having someone else cover for you now and then: A fresh pair of eyes. Team members left to fend for themselves “get a chance to do something new, and they may even find a better way to do it,” notes Michelle Kalinowski, an Acceleration Partners senior account manager in Australia who has gone off on two 10-day jaunts in the past year. During one of them, someone filling in for her made a few changes that cut an hour from a routine task the team had been doing. “The new way is much quicker,” Kalinowski says. “It’s saved us a lot of time.”

Not every employer is prepared to pay people extra to get lost, of course. Still, Glazer, who says he gets his best ideas while traveling or sitting on a beach somewhere, believes companies would see a big jump in productivity (not to mention retention) if they gave employees the green light to have lives outside of work, including vacations that refresh and recharge them. “Culture is all about what you reward,” Glazer says. “If you reward nonstop work, that’s what you’ll get.” In the long run, it’s unlikely to be pretty.