Does Your Company Have "Affluent" Summer Holidays?

Contrary to appearances from this blog, I haven't had a long Summer holiday this year. Since the last blog post I've visited "pre-revenue" enterprises in Cambridgeshire and Wales, as well as larger firms that are aiming to do something a "bit different" in the Wirral, Swindon and Staffordshire. All have been great opportunities, as the companies concerned are very successful, or have huge potential, or both, which counters the negative comments about declining British industry that may sometimes make the news. However, one issue that I have run into is that I'm in the minority in foregoing a long Summer break. A number of the things I'm working on have had to be put on hold as the critical person, or people, are on holiday. With multiple heads required, and overlapping holidays, this dead time has stretched into a couple of months.

Of course in the past there was an easy solution, and some traditional industries still use it; the company shutdown. No choice of when you take your holiday - everyone has the same. Then it's back to work at the same time. How old fashioned. How efficient. France takes it to extremes, and applies it to the entire country. However, even companies back from shutdown still run into the same problem; the people they need to deal with in other companies are on holiday. I have heard sales teams complaining that they may as well be on holiday over all of August, as everyone else is.

It struck me that there are some similarities with the often observed phenomenon of long Summer holidays setting back children's learning, at least for those from non-affluent backgrounds. For middle class children the picture is different. A holiday diet of books and improving visits to museums, art galleries, and events (such as the recent Birmingham ArtsFest) means that they return to school with a head start on their class mates. Can this be applied to companies?

Certainly if the Summer "break" means that those in work have less to do, doesn't this provide a wonderful opportunity for all those strategic things that never get done? The market analysis, the manufacturing improvement projects, the thinking about where the company will be in 3, 5 or 10 years time, because the pace means that we can only think about the next week or month. Those sales people who find all their contacts on holiday could pool their experiences and come up with some ideas on new markets and approaches. In other words, the business equivalents to those museum and gallery trips.

All of this would mean a rethink to the holiday system, giving incentives for short, separated holidays, instead of one long break, perhaps by having a sliding scale of how many "days" holiday are counted as, according to length of consecutive break, with long holidays being more "expensive." This is a complete reversal of the standard views on work disruption; most measures of absenteeism "prefer" employees to take one long period off sick, rather than several short periods, penalising those who try to return to work before they are fully recovered.

This wouldn't fit in well with schools, which seem wedded to the long break, despite the evidence from abroad of the benefits of shorter, more frequent holidays from those countries that follow a semester system. Effectively business practices are being dictated by the school system. As a parent myself I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing, but when studies of the school holiday system show the negative impact it has on the progress of children, should we then inflict that on our economy, or should we investigate alternatives for both?