Treat Your Weekend Like A Vacation
How did you feel at work this past Monday? According to research, your answer may reveal a lot about your approach to the weekend. Read this blog post to learn more.
Take a moment to recall how you felt at work on a recent Monday. Were you happy and satisfied? Or stressed and worried?
Your answer may reveal a lot about the way you approached the prior weekend. According to our research in progress, making one small mindset change — treating your weekend like a vacation — can increase your happiness. And unlike taking a more traditional vacation, this emotional boost doesn’t have to be expensive or time-consuming.
My colleagues Colin West, Sanford DeVoe, and I came to these conclusions over the course of several studies. First, we looked at the effects of actual vacations on hundreds of thousands of Americans by analyzing the subscription-only 2014–2016 data from the Gallup U.S. Daily Poll. We found that individuals who prioritize vacation are significantly happier: They exhibit more positive emotion, less negative emotion, and are more satisfied in life.
The problem is that Americans are really bad at taking vacations. Compared to workers in the European Union, Americans spend more hours in the office each week and take less time off. Part of the reason is that the U.S. is the only industrialized nation without legally mandated vacation — one out of four employed Americans receive no paid vacation days at all. But Americans don’t even use the few vacation days they are allotted: More than 50% of Americans leave their paid vacation days unused each year.
This got us thinking. While most working Americans take little time off for vacation, the majority get (and take) two days off from work every week: the weekend. We wanted to see if there’s a way to help people leverage the time they already take off from work to enjoy the potential happiness they would get from a vacation.
To do this, we ran an experiment among more than 400 working Americans over the span of a regular weekend in May 2017. The intervention was simple: On the Friday leading into the weekend, we randomly instructed half of the participants to treat the weekend like a vacation. The other half, serving as a control condition, were instructed to treat the weekend like a regular weekend. That was it. How they interpreted the instructions was entirely up to them. Everyone was left to do whatever they wanted during those next two days.
When participants were back at work on Monday, we followed up with a survey measuring their current happiness (that is, their positive emotion, negative emotion, and satisfaction). The results showed that those who had treated their weekend like a vacation were significantly happier than those who had treated it like a regular weekend. This effect held when we controlled for the amount of money they reported to have spent. Thus, without taking any extra time off from work and without needing to spend any additional money, the simple nudge to treat their time off like a vacation increased their happiness when they were back at work on Monday.
These results seemed too good to be true, so we ran the study again with more than 500 different people on another regular weekend in January 2018. This time, we also measured how happy people were during the weekend, how they spent their time, and the extent to which they were mentally present. The experimental treatment was exactly the same: At random, half were instructed to treat their weekend like a vacation, and the other half were instructed to treat it like a regular weekend. Yet again, the vacationers were statistically happier at work on Monday. They were happier throughout the weekend as well.
How did treating the weekend like a vacation boost happiness? Yes, the “vacationers” behaved somewhat differently: doing less housework and work for their jobs, staying in bed a little longer with their partner, and eating a bit more. These differences in activities, however, weren’t responsible for their increased happiness. Instead, treating the time like a vacation seems to have shifted people’s mindset. Specifically, the vacationers were more mindful of and attentive to the present moment throughout their weekend’s activities.
For example, two women — one in the control group and one instructed to treat her weekend like a vacation — reported making breakfast on Saturday morning. The first woman reported doing so with enjoyment: “Made biscuits and gravy for breakfast. It’s my favorite!” The second woman took her enjoyment one step further: “I woke everyone up with pancakes this morning. It’s something I like to do when we are on vacation. I found myself enjoying the morning more than usual, maybe it’s because I focused on staying in the moment.” The difference between the women’s experience is subtle, but crucial. Even though their activities and behaviors were largely the same, it was the second woman’s attention to the present moment — her mindset — that produced the subsequent effect on happiness during the rest of the weekend and the following Monday.
Why does this mindset shift have such a powerful effect? Research shows that slowing down and paying more attention to your surroundings, the activity at hand, and the people who are involved allows you to enjoy the activity more. Without ruminating on the past or getting distracted by anxieties or fantasies about the future, increasing your attention to the present moment makes you more sensitive to the pleasures that are already in the environment. It helps you savor experiences and life a bit more.
Even if you can’t take the entire weekend “off” because of a looming work deadline or household obligations, it is still possible to gain the benefits of a vacation mindset. You can carve out a piece of the weekend (or perhaps even the workweek) to fully enjoy and be in the present, as you would on vacation. Or you can apply a vacation mindset to whatever task is at hand. Slow down, notice, and make it more fun; turn on some upbeat music in the car while running errands, or make yourself a margarita for folding laundry.
One word of caution: Given that the vacation mindset and resulting happiness stems from mentally breaking from routine and the day-to-day grind, this intervention cannot itself become a routine. Treating every single weekend or evening off from work like a vacation might cause a reduction in its cognitive and emotional impact. We recommend saving the mental vacations for when you really need the break.
When used judiciously, however, this simple reframing allows you to enjoy some of the happiness from a vacation without taking additional time off. Our experiments suggest that your mindset is more important than the activities you take part in, or the amount of money you spend, when you’re not at work. So between weekend errands, soccer practices, and birthday parties, try to notice and appreciate the time you do have. Treating this time like a vacation can provide a needed break from the typical grind, allowing you to appropriately savor moments spent at the soccer field or gathered around the dinner table with family and friends. And when you do head back to work, you’re more likely to feel refreshed and ready to tackle your week.
SOURCE: Mogilner Holmes, C. (31 January 2019) "Treat Your Weekend Like A Vacation" (Web Blog Post). Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2019/01/treat-your-weekend-like-a-vacation
Cloud-based HR revolutionizes employee engagement
Originally posted January 27, 2014 by Henry Albrecht on https://ebn.benefitnews.com
It’s undeniable – cloud-based technologies have fundamentally changed how businesses operate. As employers transition from on- to off-premise for HRIS, they are seeing increased productivity and profitability in the obvious ways: lower up-front costs, faster innovation, easier integration, and no nasty upgrade hassles. It’s quite possible, however, that a less-obvious HR cloud revolution may prove to be even more meaningful – one that is more about people and culture.
This revolution, led by firms who bring a consumer-like experience and an understanding of the value of social connections at work, is helping build employer brands, improve engagement, and increase productivity and profits. It is ushering collaboration, innovation, and transparency in new ways. Here are three ways this revolution can change company culture:
1. The cloud allows for employee-driven collaboration and innovation at a new scale. This is particularly powerful with new tools like Brainstorm, created by financial software company Intuit. Brainstorm fosters employee innovation by allowing employees around the world to collaborate on new ideas, from small changes in process to large-scale, innovative business ideas. First created to spark innovation and cross-team collaboration, the tool helped Intuit generate a 1,000% increase in documented new ideas and a 500% increase in innovation in only a few short years. Within this new frontier for employee engagement and innovation, HR teams can also now easily identify the most innovative employees and support their growth.
Since its development a few years ago, the tool has expanded as a way for Intuit to foster inter-company collaboration, such as solving shared problems between themselves and the Red Cross. And after a partner asked Intuit to license Brainstorm, the company realized how valuable the software could be for other enterprises. Now, companies like General Electric and Lockheed Martin are using the tool with great success.
2. The cloud increases executive visibility of employee happiness.Historically, layers of reporting and infrastructure hindered executive visibility of everything from finances, operations, and even employee satisfaction. While financial and operational reporting does exists, (albeit expensive and often on-premise due to security) gauging employee morale at regular and consistent intervals has proven to be much more difficult.
Cloud-based technologies now allow for a new layer of instant visibility and transparency. TINYhr, a Seattle-based company, createdTINYpulse to collect employee feedback in one-question (i.e., “tiny”) weekly surveys. The instant feedback gives company leaders a constant pulse on employee happiness, so they can quickly (and cost-effectively) identify major issues along with superstar employees who can lead morale.
3. The cloud elevates the social power of community. Traditional employee wellness programs have been limited to one-time biometric screenings, sporadic events, or one-to-one or one-to-many communications.Cloud-based solutions open the door for many-to-many connections, fostering broad, social employee engagement versus individual task completion. Gamification, points systems, and both individual and team challenges energize the experience while still addressing compliance-based elements. By tracking goals, issuing challenges, and aligning engagement, health, performance, culture, and talent strategies, cloud-based products and technologies help HR departments think bigger, build internal brands faster and reach new engagement heights.
As the cloud-based revolution unfolds and newer technologies come to market, it’s imperative for HR and executive teams to adopt tools that align with business goals and will actually be used. And while these tools allow for a new layer of transparency, they will shine a light in the darkest corners of your company. So be ready to act on what you learn. Democracy is floating on a cloud.
