Losing vacation time

Medical Laboratory Observer, Feb, 2004 by Christopher S. Frings

Q The laboratory for which I work has the policy that only 40 hours (one week) of vacation can be carried over to the next calendar year. Many of us will not be able to take all of our earned vacation this year and will lose it. We cannot take the time due to the hiring freeze and the extra work we are doing with conversions of laboratories purchased in the past 18 months. Any suggestions?

A According to Alton Sturtevant, "Unfortunately, in today's healthcare environment, doing more with less is more the rule than the exception. That being said, people are not likely to continue to work in an environment as described with the question. Employees and their management should strive to schedule work and time off in such a way as to allow everyone to take full advantage of his earned benefits. The hiring freeze will tend to make it difficult to take multiple days off in a row. A strategy to allow for using all vacation time in this environment would be to take full and part days off during times that are not so busy. As a manager, I would allow time off, even if others had to work voluntary overtime. Senior officers in a company, of course, frown upon this. When faced with this situation, I talked in advance to the senior managers and explained that we may incur overtime allowing for earned time off, which was approved."

Larry Crolla advises, "Call the question in to your human resources department and state the facts. An exemption may need to be given this year because of what you stated as extenuating circumstances. If human resources does not come to some adjustment with the group, take your vacation and state you must take it or lose it."

Marti Bailey points out, "Responsibility for use of earned vacation time is shared jointly between the employee and his supervisor. If you have not already discussed your concerns about losing vacation time with your supervisor, then you need to do so. If it is a department-wide problem, or if your supervisor cannot resolve the issue, then it needs to be bumped up to your laboratory manager. I would be interested to know if any of you have requested vacation time and been denied. This is a far different story than not having requested time off because you think it will not be approved.

"The reality is that open positions, major instrument and systems implementations, mergers and/or acquisitions have become more the standard than the exception--meaning that it is likely that at least one of these situations could apply to you at any given time. So, if you use these circumstances as excuses for not being able to take vacation, you will be hard pressed to find a good time to take off and just might let yourself slip into victim status. This can occur when you choose to focus negatively on why you cannot take vacation, instead of positively on how you can take vacation."

Bottom line. Everyone needs to take vacation to handle their personal affairs, as well as respite from the daily challenges of work. The beneficial effects of time off from work are well known. If you find that your vacation requests are denied and that this will result in loss of your earned vacation time, contact your human resources department to discuss a solution.

Christopher S. Frings is an internationally known consultant and speaker on the topics of leadership, managing change, time management, reaching goals, and stress management. His consulting firm, Chris Frings & Associates, is in Birmingham, AL.