Having just returned from holiday, my attention was bound to be piqued by a survey that reported close to a fifth of SME managers/owners in the IT sector in the UK did not have any time off last year. According to the same survey – The Aldermore SME Future Attitudes report – another 25% of IT SME bosses took as little as 1-5 days off in 2016. Or, to put it another way, 44% of IT SME managers/owners took five days or less in holidays last year.
That is a staggering figure. And it cannot be healthy, for them or their families.
The report also found that in preparation for going on holiday, only 36% passed work over to their colleagues, compared to 35% who did any outstanding work while they were away and 17% who cancelled days off to ensure the work was completed. Even when they did go on holiday, 25% of them answered business emails and calls while they were off.
Passionate people
Carl D’Ammassa, group managing director for Business Finance at Aldermore, puts it down to the fact small business owners are “clearly passionate about what they do, so it is no surprise that they find it hard to leave work behind when they are meant to be on holiday”.
He adds that it is crucial small business owners “take proper breaks to achieve a good work life balance and avoid burn out. Enjoying well-earned time off to recharge their batteries could bring a fresh perspective to their business thinking”.
Now, while I am sure that much of their inability to go on holiday properly is down to their “passion” and work requirements. I cannot help wondering if some of it might also be down to their inability to trust other people to take over the workload in their absence. If you look again, you can see that more than half of IT SME bosses either did the work themselves while they were on holiday or cancelled their break because they needed to ensure the work was done. What that says to me is that a significant number of SME IT managers believe their presence is fundamental to the running of their business.
Holiday entitlement
This perhaps accounts for their more generous attitude to employees taking holiday entitlement, with 71% happy to see workers use up all their annual leave. If managers believe their presence is so critical to the running of the business that they cannot leave it, the flip side is that they are probably more comfortable with employees taking time off because they don’t value their contribution as highly. This is a typical small business issue.
The owner and manager are so often the same person which makes it incredibly difficult for the manager to hand over control to anyone else in his or her absence because he or she has a personal stake in the company. At the same time, because they have fewer formal training structures in place, they often struggle to develop and progress their employees to the point where they can be comfortable handing the reins over to them.
While this was a UK-based survey, the findings would probably be replicated in any similar exercise conducted among their Irish equivalents. Can much be done to change things? Probably not. It’s hard enough getting someone to give up responsibility for their smart phone for a week, let alone their business.
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