The importance of taking a break
Don't worry - the newsletter isn't taking a break - but I hope you are!
It’s one of the best feelings, isn’t it? You have been working hard for a long period of time, perhaps extra intensely so in order to finish everything up before your holidays, and you finally get to clear your desk, put in an auto-reply on your e-mail, and log off to enjoy some much needed, and well earned, leisure time. We’ve reached July, and for many of us in the Northern hemisphere, that typically means that it is time for a summer break, some vacation days, and an opportunity to recover.
If you’re anything like me, however, it can take some time to “flip the switch” mentally, and ease into the feeling of not working. It’s a process to let go of the work responsibilities for some time, and reframe the daily routines. Considering how work has shifted over the last couple of years, it is easier than ever to be available (on your e-mail, Teams, work phone, and what have you) at all times. There have been ample discussions about how this constant availability affects work-life balance and employee well-being, which has sparked a movement about “the right to disconnect from work”. Some organizations even go so far as to prohibit outside-work-hour contact altogether (the German employment ministry being the prime example of one organization that implemented this). The right to disconnect is no less relevant when it comes to more extended periods of leave, where some may find it difficult to shake the feeling of availability, even though they are fully entitled to their time off.
I was recently speaking to some friends who are currently residing in the US. For them, it seems to be standard to have an annual leave of about two weeks in the summer. This can sound shocking to a Swede as myself, where it is mandated by law that all full-time employees have the right to a minimum of 25 paid vacation days each year - a total of at least 5 weeks off from work. Seeing that this is a minimum, it is not uncommon to find jobs where the number of vacation days span up to 7 weeks or longer per year. Unless otherwise agreed upon, an employee in Sweden has the right to have at least four of these weeks placed consecutively during the summer months (June to August) in order to facilitate an extended leave. Swedes love their holidays (and if you’ve seen our weather for most of the year, you wouldn’t blame us for wanting to make the most of the few sunny days we have!).
In the Swedish context, the history behind the long summer holidays dates back to 1938, when the first vacation law was implemented, giving the workers the right to two weeks paid leave. The base argument was that it was important for health reasons that every employee had the chance to recover. The law was revised in 1951, and then again in 1963, extending the leave to three, and then four weeks respectively. In 1978, it became five. This dovetailed a phenomenon which was called “Industrisemester”, or “Industrial holiday”, where all the industries would essentially shut down for a few weeks, halting all production in July every year. No expectations to produce, no work calls, and no-one trying to send you cheeky messages on the Teams-app during a whole month, what a dream, right?
Needless to say, the norms and regulations surrounding vacation and annual leave differ across the world. The stark contrast between the US and Sweden in this regard got me thinking a little bit about recovery, and what opportunities we actually have to recharge from work on our time off. How much time do we actually need? Is a few weeks enough, or is it a “less is more”-type of situation? And as any good academic, when faced with a new question I do not have the answer to, the natural step for me is to start searching for meta-analyses on the topic (let’s not unpack whether or not I am making the most of my own recovery by reading meta-analyses about recovery in the summer time…).
What do we know about recovery and vacation time?
First, I must say that it was not too easy to find good studies on the effects of vacation time, or extended periods of leave. My initial thought was that I perhaps was using the wrong search words, or missing some technical term that may be more prevalent among researchers focusing on this particular area. However, when I got reading a bit, I quickly realized that there may not be that many studies that actually have looked into this systematically. I kept coming across the phrase “more research is needed” in each paper, (which, to be fair, is a blanket statement that you always tend to see in any research area - true as it may be), indicating that it does not seem to be overly explored. There is a lot of work on the benefits of recovery, and that is undoubtedly an important aspect of a sustainable and healthy working life. But the importance of vacation time for recovery appears to be more sparsely explored. The studies I did find though, painted an interesting picture.
In a study from 2009, a group of researchers looked into the question whether or not employees actually do recover from vacation - and conducted a meta-analysis (pooling the results of many studies to explore overall effects), to explore the impact of vacation on health and well-being indicators. Overall, they found that vacation time did have a positive, albeit small, effect on health and well-being, but that this effect soon faded after resumption of work. In more recent work, a meta-analysis from 2023, explored both the impact of vacation on employee well-being, and the importance of the duration of the vacation. Similar to the study from 2009, they found that a vacation break from work was positively associated with well-being, but that the improved levels of well-being returned to base levels after returning to work. Importantly, the study did not find that a longer vacation duration (in this case, defined as >10 days) was associated with better benefits. This led the authors to conclude that it may be more beneficial to plan more frequent, but shorter, vacations throughout the year in order to portion out the recovery periods, rather than having it all in one extended stretch. It should be kept in mind however that this may not be practically feasible within all work roles, subject to personal preferences, and - again - have you seen the Swedish weather in all other months of the year?
One should bear in mind that this research is quite nascent, built on a limited number of studies that have their methodological limitations. Nevertheless, what it really points to is the need for regular recovery experiences. So, regardless of how you prefer to take your leave, make sure to take that break once in a while. This means actively disconnecting from work for a period of time, dropping work stress, but also actively engaging in things that you like and enjoy. Production might not shut down for a full month anymore like in the “Industry holiday”-days, but that doesn’t mean that you have to be productive all the time. As research suggests, those breaks are actually needed for long-term productivity anyway, so let’s not neglect the importance of a good break.
Come to think of it, I think I’ll give it a go myself, now.
