No emails please, we’re on holiday: How to switch off 

You’re on the beach but the only thing on your mind is your boss. Oh, and those hundreds of emails about to land… 
You’re on the beach but the only thing on your mind is your boss. Oh, and those hundreds of emails about to land…  Credit: Alamy

It’s 6am and I am sitting on the chilly bathroom floor of a New York hotel, my laptop resting on the loo. My mobile is jammed under my chin and, as the conference call kicks in, I’m either whispering – so as not to wake my boyfriend – or have my hand wedged over the mouthpiece so the other callers won’t hear his snores.

This was meant to be a badly needed 10-day holiday. But four days in, it has become a work-ation, a hybrid of work and vacation, with a disproportionate emphasis on the former. So far, we’ve spent most of our time apart – and as for going to a gallery or seeing a show? As they say in New York, fuggetabowdit.

Our only daytime outings together have been an hour at Century 21, where I bought a disastrous jacket – which I now don’t have time to return. Sounds familiar? That’s because the days of leaving a hotel phone number with the office in case of emergency are long gone.

Now that the average UK household owns 7.4 web-enabled devices, it’s perhaps inevitable that some come with us on holiday, meaning it’s all too easy to start checking work emails poolside. Earlier this year, Mintel issued a report on our inability to really switch off – despite our desperate desire to do so.

‘A significant proportion of consumers say they are unable to escape their work on holiday, in large part due to their inability to fully unplug,’ the report said. ‘Connectivity can be a jailer, eroding once sacrosanct boundaries between work and leisure.’

This is especially ironic because the report also says that ‘relaxation is the factor UK holidaymakers are most likely to seek on holiday’.

‘You may not want to work but you feel you should check in. Then you find an email that needs answering… and that’s it, you get sucked in,’ says Sir Cary Cooper, professor of organisational psychology and health at Manchester Business School.

‘We have this crazy notion that we’re indispensable. We are not – if you have a heart attack, the company will continue. It’s family and friends that are indispensable.’ 

But perhaps it’s not so cut and dried. ‘Many don’t feel indispensable, they feel replaceable,’ argues Elaine Slater, consultant therapist at The Priory Hospital. ‘Stepping away, we worry that we’ll be seen as unprofessional or lazy.’

Advances in technology and the last recession created the perfect work-ation storm. ‘With the recession, people worried about being seen to take a holiday – if they did, they felt they should be in constant communication,’ explains Cooper.

‘Today, staying in touch is triggered by insecurity and the need to appear valuable. Some see status in appearing to be a workaholic.’ 

Ironically, this constant engagement does not work in employers’ favour. In 2012, Dr Sabine Sonnentag, professor for work and organisational psychology at the University of Mannheim, Germany, found that taking time off ‘is an important mechanism that helps employees stay energetic, engaged and healthy, even when facing high job demands.’

Writer Beatrice enjoying a phone-free break at Lake Garda
Writer Beatrice enjoying a phone-free break at Lake Garda

Cooper adds, ‘Without a holiday, cognitive dysfunction takes place; you’re not as vigilant, nor able to work as quickly.’

Some employers are waking up to this and instigating change. In 2012, Volkswagen in Germany stopped emails being sent to its employees’ BlackBerrys 30 minutes after their shift ended, starting them again 30 minutes before they returned to work. 

In 2014, fellow car manufacturer Daimler followed suit, allowing employees to opt to have any emails they receive as they hit the beach automatically deleted so as not to get caught up with work when away, nor come back to email hell after two weeks.

Meanwhile, in France earlier this year a set of new laws to reform work conditions included the ‘right to disconnect from office communications’, officially forcing employers to stop encroaching on workers’ personal time. 

Vive la revolution and all that, but as a freelance writer, it’s hard for me to switch off because I’m loath to turn work down. We self-employed people are so dependent on our devices that it can feel like they own us, rather than vice versa. 

‘I never switch off,’ agrees Nancy Brady, who owns her own PR company, NBPR. ‘I take conference calls in my bedroom [when I’m on holiday], with the kids outside, knowing to be quiet. If there’s no Wi-Fi, I’ve been known to spend whole days scouting for internet cafés.’  

But not giving yourself a proper holiday could have worse repercussions than just a ticking off from the boss, warns Cooper. ‘If you work long hours, you will get ill in one form or another: cardiovascular problems, cancer, gastro-intestinal diseases… we are machines, we have a lot of moving parts and these can wear out. We need rest, relaxation and to commune with family and friends.’

And partners. Far from being a time for shared fun and lots of healthy holiday sex, work-ations can place relationships under serious strain.

A survey by Durex of 2,000 adults found that 40 per cent of holidaymakers are less likely to instigate sex if their partner is using their phone in bed – and 41 per cent admitted that nights on holiday with their partner are most likely to be spent in bed together, both concentrating on their phones rather than on each other. Sexy.  

Add to that research by the University of Sussex, which shows that the use of a device by one partner encourages device use by the other – and that replying to your boss from bed could equal an existential crisis for your other half.

‘A partner will pick up their phone, too, as a defensive mechanism because [the other’s phone use] can evoke issues such as, “Why do they prefer being on their phone to focusing on me? Are they still attracted to me?’’’ explains Slater.

But perhaps we are too quick to blame technology for our workaholic tendencies and are turning holidays of the past into rosé-tinted memories. Haven’t we always had a desire to stay connected, long before we became glued to our screens?

Take my old boss who ran a hedge fund in the pre-smartphone 1990s: he went trekking in some remote region with a satellite dish attached to his person so he could be sure to keep up with the markets via Bloomberg. 

Or the holiday in the same decade when my mother regularly drove my father from our rented rural Italian idyll to a FedEx office in a commercial unit near Rome to pick up and drop off papers – a three-hour round trip (she didn’t trust him driving on the right with his mind full of work).

At least our smartphones spare us this? And with progressive governments and employers showing the way, there’s a glimmer of hope that not being on your work phone could soon become the new status symbol. As Mintel’s report found: ‘Poor signal could become a badge of honour, a selling-point for an area.’

In the meantime, give friends and family an emergency landline number and leave the mobile in the safe, so that you won’t, as with my New York trip, come back resentful and exhausted.

Getting away from it all really should mean just that.

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