Every day, around noon, my puppy begins to whine, wanting a good mid-day run. While his work ethic may be questionable, he knows when he needs a break. I tend to forget. Several years ago, I worked at a university on a contract that did not include vacation. My attempt to find more time for family and fun actually made things worse: I thought skipping my lunch hour through the summer would give me more time with my kids. Predictably, though, a non-stop workday often left me too tired to play. By the time my contract came to an end, I was exhausted.

Human resources expert Tim Rutledge, of Tim Rutledge Inc., would not be surprised: “People need to get the message to take their allocated time off — it’s a wellness issue,” he says. “Vacation is just plain good for you.”

And yet, studies show that Canadians in all sectors are not using all of their vacation time. In fact, only 68% of Canadians used all their vacation in 2011.

What about the nonprofit sector?

While no surveys have been done to examine vacation use in the nonprofit sector in particular, there’s evidence that in many organizations, the picture is no different. In fact, even as more Canadians are engaging in voluntourism — using vacation time to work with nonprofit organizations around the world — many who work in the nonprofit sector find it hard to disengage even for a couple of weeks.

Rutledge says the nonprofit sector faces particular challenges in this regard. Because nonprofits tend to be cause-driven, he notes, “Some supervisors believe everyone should rally to the cause and this supercedes everything including personal life.”

With more than half of all nonprofits in Canada having fewer than five employees, the challenge for staff and managers to take vacation is often greater. Ten Thousand Villages is an example of a smaller organization: each fair-trade retail store has an average of two staff people, a manager and a second employee, as well as a team of volunteers. Ten Thousand Villages’ human resources manager Lucille Harms-Toews says, “Sometimes, vacation can feel like more trouble than it’s worth. Something will happen or maybe there are trust issues. Often managers feel responsible and that they don’t have personnel to cover for them.” Among Ten Thousand Villages’ employees in retail stores, almost half use only a third of their allotted vacation time.

The need for vacation in the nonprofit sector may also be greater. A recent Imagine Canada survey showed that one in seven nonprofits are under high levels of organizational stress, while half of charities reported a simultaneous increased demand for their goods and services, and difficulty in carrying out their mission. In the general population, Expedia’s Vacation Deprivation survey revealed that 47% of people surveyed felt they were “more in need of a vacation than in any of the previous four years.” Here too, the nonprofit sector likely mirrors the rest of the population.

Vacation as compensation

Vacation is part of an employee’s total compensation, and many nonprofits, unable to compete with private or public sector wages, offer increased vacation time as an incentive for employees. However, if the employees are unable to take holidays or are discouraged from doing so, this negates the benefit. Some people bank lieu time and many report not being able to put a dent in their vacation.

While vacation is a legal right, different organizations offer different options for unused days: some allow employees to take vacation pay in lieu of untaken holidays while others allow employees with a clear vacation plan to carry a certain number of days from one year to another. Still others simply erase any unused holidays from the records.

Tim Rutledge puts it bluntly: “By voluntarily taking vacation pay [instead of taking vacation], you are possibly buying yourself a health problem.”

It’s good to get away

Fortunately, many organizations are aware of the benefits to their staff taking holidays and encourage staff to do so. Rutledge says that managers have a responsibility to communicate to employees that they are not indispensable but they are valued. He also notes that while staff holidays can seem to put pressure on an organization, “It’s good for an organization to get along without even key staff — the day may come when these people are not there and it’s vital to know how to get along without them.”

Harms-Toews strongly encourages all employees to take their full vacation. She says, “If you don’t take time away, I don’t know if mission is enough to keep you there when you start getting burned out. Leaving on holidays helps you refresh mission-mindedness.” She recalls a colleague who warned a staff member that unused vacation time would be perceived as a liability on a performance review, as it indicated poor time management.

Work hard, play hard

Many staff at the World Wildlife Fund Canada’s Atlantic office are divers who have been attracted to the mission of the organization because of their passion for preserving exotic locations and species. WWFC Atlantic’s communications manager, Stacey McCarthy, notes that for these people, travel is important, and colleagues support one another, even in a small office, in order to help make vacation possible.

Karen Snider, national media manager at the Canadian Red Cross, also loves to travel. She also volunteers at a family-run orphanage in Uganda. While she says, “I love the work I do at the Canadian Red Cross and our teams work very hard, often working nights and weekends when emergencies occur,” she adds that “Personally, it’s important for me to have time off to do these other things that I love so much.” Snider was actually in Uganda, with no cell or internet access, at the time of the 2010 Haiti earthquake. She says, “If I had been in Canada, I would have returned to work to support the team, no questions asked.” However, she says that it was also helpful that she was able to support her team upon her return, offering fresh energy at a time when they needed a break.

How to get away

While many — especially younger — staff and managers are increasingly opting for a succession of long weekends rather than an extended break, Rutledge advises people to take holidays in bigger chunks. “If you have three weeks of holidays, I recommend you take a two-week period and take an honest to goodness vacation, even if you don’t go away. If people take short chunks, such as long weekends, you really aren’t taking time to recharge. If you take a day at a time, you’re likely going to connect with office in one way or another because you can. The point of vacation is to get away.”

Snider says, “I think taking holidays are important because it’s a chance for me to rest, re-charge and sometimes it helps me to come back with new ideas or perspectives.”

Harms-Toews agrees. “I go by the philosophy that it’s helpful to get away and come back with fresh energy.” She notes that it can be overwhelming to use all vacation days one at a time. She adds that colleagues usually find it easier to have workflow interrupted by someone’s two-week absence than to have someone constantly in and out of the business. For those who are concerned about the organization’s mission, Harms-Toews says, “It will all be there when you get back — and you’ll come back with energy and joy.”

One way Harms-Toews has been able to promote employees taking holidays is to encourage regional managers to take holidays. She says, “It has to do with modeling. As regional managers start to take holidays, more store managers do too. This lets people know it’s okay to take care of themselves.”

Another way organizations can encourage staff to take time away is by instituting seasonal office closures. WWF Canada promotes vacation and wellness with an organizational shutdown between Christmas and New Years. These days are paid, and are in addition to vacation days. McCarthy of WWFC says, “Our head office knows how important vacation is because we are extremely busy. They don’t want to see us burn out or suffer negatively and they value our personal time and space.”

Snider says, “We are definitely encouraged to take our holidays in the year that we earned them.” And, as if to prove the fact that Snider feels “100% supported and encouraged to use my holiday time”, she’s packing to leave for holidays right now.

Susan Fish is a writer/editor at Storywell, a company that helps individuals and organization tell their story well. She has written for the nonprofit sector for almost two decades and loves a good story.