August is generally the busiest month for people to take holidays in the UK. But, your traditional two week break may not be the expected holiday you planned, according to new research conducted by Virgin Atlantic Airways, most bosses think it’s acceptable to call employees while they’re on holiday. A study of 2,000 employers published on its Vflyer blog shows that unless staff travel to far-flung destinations like the Maldives or the Caribbean, they’re considered fair game for texts, phone calls and emails.
The results shows that one in three bosses actually believe that staff should expect to be called while on holiday if they’ve failed to tie things up properly before jetting off. It also emerged that more than one in ten managers think that if employees are provided with a company mobile phone they should be open to receiving calls when on annual leave.
Four in ten managers say they’re much more likely to ring an employee if they haven’t travelled too far away and according to the survey workers are most likely to get bothered if they visit Devon, the Lake District and Cornwall, whereas very few bosses would disturb a holiday in New Zealand, the Caribbean or Thailand. A brutal 14 per cent of no-nonsense employers have even telephoned a worker to reprimand them while they’re away on annual leave. But 23 per cent of adults said they simply don’t get paid enough to have their holiday disturbed by their employer and over a quarter refuse to let work take over their time off.
But, it seems Brits don’t help themselves, with the typical holidaymaker checking their phone up to 12 times a day, although 80 per cent said they do this more out of habit than necessity. The poll found that 20 per cent of workers actually expect to get calls when on holiday but find it extremely annoying. It also emerged that in a typical two week holiday the average adult sends nine work related texts or emails. A more relaxed one in five workers said it didn’t bother them that much when they get calls from the office while in sunny climes, although nearly half have ignored calls while holidaying.
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