The Patriot Ledger (Quincy, MA), July 13, 2005, Wednesday

Copyright 2005 The Patriot Ledger
The Patriot Ledger (Quincy, MA)

July 13, 2005 Wednesday
City Edition

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1

HEADLINE: Vacation blues: It stinks for those still at the office;
Workloads increase for those left behind - and for vacationers when they return

BYLINE: Julie Jette

BODY:
The Patriot Ledger
The days of summer aren't so lazy if you're the one stuck in the office while many of your co-workers are out on what the Brits like to call 'holiday.'
Call it the dark side of vacation season: For those left behind to deal with inflated workloads, it is anything but.
It was not always this way. Companies used to hire small armies of temp workers in the summertime to make up for those who were missing for a week or two, or longer.
Some still do, but "it's not as significant as it once was," says Mark Spengler, area manager for staffing company Manpower in eastern Massachusetts.
"People are doing more with less," Spengler said. "Managers no longer have an individual secretary or an admin supporting them, therefore there aren't as many of those positions open during the summer because of vacation."
Often, bosses figure "it's only a week, we can get by," he added.
Scheduling vacation time can be an administrative nightmare for department heads and human resources managers. But many executives downplay the impact, saying it's just part of doing business.
It helps that the pace of business slows during the summer for most companies.
"It quiets down a little bit in the summer so we're able to grant more vacation (time)," said Gayle O'Connell, vice president of human resources for Arbella Insurance in Quincy.
But the summer can actually be a busy time for some businesses, such as Rockland accounting firm Needel, Welch & Stone. The firm does the accounting work for many not-for-profit organizations whose fiscal years end on June 30. That leads to a busy July and August for most of the firm's nearly 20 employees, said Tim Barry, senior tax manager at the firm.
"A lot of the staff took vacations earlier in June rather than taking them in July or August," Barry said.
Eastern Bank had a larger-than-usual vacation scheduling challenge this year because of its recent merger with Plymouth Savings Bank. The bank imposed a moratorium on vacations between mid-May and mid-June to plan and execute the Memorial Day weekend conversion of Plymouth Savings branches to Eastern Bank branches.
"It was all hands on deck for the integration," said Joe Bartolotta, spokesman for Boston-based Eastern Bank. "(Now) it's the typical juggling act; it just got a little bit more challenging because instead of 12 months to spread out your vacation, you have 11 months."
Bartolotta said the bank does hire summer help to fill in at teller positions. The bank tracks traffic in all its branches and often moves the "floating" tellers around to where they're most needed.
Then, of course, there are the non-vacationing vacationers: people who are officially on vacation but check their cell phone messages and e-mail frequently - or never actually stop coming to the office or shop.
Linda Glasser, an assistant director in human resources at Cornell University and a lecturer at the Ithaca, N.Y.-based college's Institute of Labor Relations, was supposed to be taking two days off when she was reached in her office late last week.
"I was at work all day yesterday and I'm here until at least 2:30 today. There it went," Glasser said sheepishly.
Despite her own failure to keep away from the office on a vacation day, Glasser said the importance of time off shouldn't be underestimated.
"It helps people to rejuvenate and it helps clear the mind as well as reduces stress on the body," said Glasser, who is leading a committee at Cornell that is looking at how workers can combat stress and burnout. "If you don't take vacations, that pattern of stress continues. What happens is you lose your resiliency over time."
One difficulty workers have in taking real vacations, she said, is the amount of work that must be finished before they leave, and then the pile sitting there upon their return.
"We've had staff say, 'It's not worth it, the stress is too much,'" Glasser said. "And we say, 'No, you have to take a vacation.'" Julie Jette may be reached at jjette@ledger.com.