Or, at least, you shouldn’t be.

On Tuesday I posted about a great article on LinkedIn about a company that gives its employees a MINIMUM number of vacation days they must take each year. They do this because they care about their employees and want them to be healthy, and not burned out. Within the article, Mathias (the CEO of the company) makes an important point:

A company has to learn how to function when people are on vacation and unavailable, however important their role is.

This is where most organizations will be unable to heed this CEO’s advice. They can’t implement a minimum vacation policy, because they can’t live without their employees working all the time, particularly those at the higher levels. And certainly the boss could never take five weeks off throughout the year, right? But here’s the rub: just because your current system “needs” everyone available all the time, doesn’t mean that’s the only way to do it.

Mathias took three weeks off in France, totally out of touch with the office, and they didn’t implode. In fact, if you can’t pluck someone out of your office for a couple of weeks, and have others fill in that gap, then you’re doing it wrong. You don’t have the right people, and you haven’t developed a system that is smart enough and learning quickly enough to fill in the gaps. Fix that. And give people their time back. You’ll be amazed at what whole, focused people can accomplish.