Take your leave

OPINION: We have recently had school holidays and Labour weekend, and it brought home the fact to me that the busier you are, the more breaks you need.

Just like a battery, if you don't recharge, you get run down. Performance is diminished and things go slower.

In these tough times people are reluctant to go on leave in case they come back and they find that that someone else is in their chair. True, it is always a risk, especially when businesses are looking at costs, but if you are a good honest hard worker, and if your employer just doesn't have the work, then someone else will snap you up. It's the ones who have been resting on their backsides that need to worry. Employers hate those sorts, and will look to shed them first, and the references won't be too flash either.

Talking of honesty, this is also a time of increased fraud. When people have families to feed they will be open to temptation. They might think the employer won't miss it or can afford it; but most of us know that there is no place for such thinking.

It is well documented that the failure to take leave is a major risk for employee fraud. An employee who has been fiddling the system will often get caught out when they are forced to take leave. The classic story is of the car park attendant who went on holiday and the car park takings rose dramatically!

But it's not just about the dishonest and the lazy.

We have the summer holidays coming up. It's been one hell of a year for many of us, and an opportunity to take a well deserved rest.

On the one hand the four weeks annual leave we get means many businesses won't reopen till the 12^th.  That's a week later than the old days and a week's trade goes begging; but used properly we come back refreshed and recharged and raring to go .

I'm sure there are physiological and psychological studies, but I don't need them to show that regular and well timed breaks are actually more beneficially to business productivity than soldiering through.

Now we all know you have to turn up the heat and burn the midnight oil from time to time, and the thrill of the deadline gets you through, but work like that all the time without the breaks or the holidays and you will be inefficient, less effective and worse, potentially make costly mistakes.

Happy Holidays!

Adam Davy is Managing Partner of BDO in Wellington