A Guide to Maximizing Your Vacation Time (she said)
by Heather 23 Mar 2011As an employee, I always managed at least four weeks of vacation every year in spite of officially receiving a mere two weeks of annual leave. The tactics I (and my husband) employed over the years allowed us to feed our travel addiction (see our resume here) and to live what we call the vacation lifestyle. Interested in expanding your annual leave possibilities? Try these strategies to stretch your time away from the traditional American workplace without getting the boot.
Leverage Federal Holidays
If you book your vacation around a Federal Holiday and you can extend your vacation without burning extra leave. Crowded destinations and higher prices need not await you, either. Use creative travel planning (you’re a travel addict, right?) to dodge high-season destinations in favor of low and shoulder season destinations. Consider celebrating Thanksgiving at the beach, in the tropics, or with a golf trip to the Southern US. What about Christmas in Europe rather than at an overcrowded ski resort or on an over-priced beach? You could spend the Fourth of July at the beach — on Maui!
Bookend Weekends
Booking your vacation to include weekends stealthily makes a vacation feel longer. For example, if you spend seven of days of annual leave beginning on a Friday and continuing through the Monday of the following week, you will be out of the office for eleven days for the “price” of seven. When you return to the office, it feels more like you’ve missed only one week of work since Fridays and Mondays are typically less productive. You’ve just had an eleven-day vacation and can honestly say, “I was out of the office for about a week.”
Flex Time
Some employers allow or even encourage flex time. Employees still work a standard number of hours in a pay period, working fewer but longer days. Many nurses work 12 hour shifts, and some corporate or government workers can arrange a full day off once every two weeks for a marginally longer work day. It means less commuting and a nice break from the office on a normal work day. I think being regularly out of the office on a day when most of your colleagues are at work adds additional satisfaction to your day off!
Comp Time
When extra work hours (normally on a special project) accrue as additional time off rather than as additional pay, you earn comp time. Who hasn’t been asked to stay late or work a weekend every once in awhile? Ask for that extra time you work to be granted as comp time and the extra work on your part during a big push on a special project adds up like additional annual leave. The best part? You’re on the books sacrificing for a specific goal for the company but your sacrifice did not cost the company any extra money – let your boss reward you with a well-deserved break!
LWOP
Leave without pay, or LWOP (pronounced el-whop), is the greatest and most underutilized resource available to the employee. Yes, it is unpaid vacation – plan it into your budget (read more about vacation budgeting here). Be strategic with this golden ticket. Ask your human resources department if your company allows LWOP, and don’t be surprised if nobody has asked about this previously. To deviously utilize LWOP, take it early in the year while leaving your annual leave hours unspent. As the year’s end nears, approach your boss, asking for what’s rightfully due to you. “I have all this vacation time I haven’t used, boss!” With a little luck you can quietly squeeze in a couple of extra weeks of vacation per year!
Workplace Philosophy
To successfully employ any of these strategies, you must be an excellent employee. Don’t waste office time doing personal email, Facebook, Twitter, smoking, drinking coffee, or gabbing on your mobile, but rather do good work, and step up when you’re needed. If you take the initiative to make sure your boss and your company look good, they are more likely to value you and to allow you flexibility with your annual leave.
Workplace Vacation Etiquette
I always tried not to make my vacation a burden on my co-workers. Clearly set expectations for them and your boss when you are away. Make it clear what you do, do your work ahead if possible, and leave well-documented and complete information for co-workers in your absence. Acknowledge your co-workers with a nice thank-you gift, and return the favor by covering for them when they go away. Decide how available you will be by phone and email on your vacation, let the office know your availability, and stick to your plan.
Maximize Your Vacation
A judicious application of these strategies and an avoidance of bragging around the water cooler should mean more vacation time for you without creating workplace difficulties. Offer real value to your employer, don’t burden your co-workers, and explore your workplace’s options for additional time out of the office. Strategize the timing of your vacations so that you maximize your time away from the office and take advantage of little-used policies to extend your annual leave!
This works well if one is employed in a traditional way. When self employed, it’s a bit more challenging, especially in the work-from-home mode, because there is always SOMETHING that needs doing, some email that needs answering, some editor who needs a handholding or a rush job…however, what I do is simply take days off here and there, including–and this part is hard for a totally wired geeklet like me–from the computer, or at least the social media part of it.
That’s actually a tricky thing to do, because I love to read, and I enjoy reading blogs, and feel guilty when I don’t keep up with my favourites–or comment on them, more importantly. I usually read your email feeds of your new posts, but prefer to come here, and leave a comment, because as a writer and longtime blogger, I know how much comments, actual conversational type comments, can mean to someone posting their thoughts online.