It’s summer, you’re on holiday in the sunshine with your family 2,000 miles from home, you haven’t spent more than a few hours at weekends with them for months, so why are you answering work emails and checking LinkedIn? 

Talk about the government banning mobiles in the classroom (why were they even allowed there in the first place?)  - it’s grown-ups who should know better but are glued to their phones and laptops wherever they are.

Being on holiday when you’re not on holiday and still working seems to be de rigueur in the 2020s.

Whether its serious FOMO (fear of missing out), a tyrant CEO, incompetent staff or plain and simple work addiction, plugging in, logging on and keeping up to speed with work during holidays is an epidemic heading for a health emergency.

Workers have breaks from the workplace for a reason – to turn off, refresh and recharge and alleviate the stress.

Yet by lakeside cafés in Slovenia, beaches in Spain, poolside in the States or cable car queues in the Alps, you’re likely to hear a British person barking instructions to work colleagues or scrolling through their emails.

For most, it’s not as if bosses expect it. It’s choice.

On LinkedIn this week, a company director said he denied three requests by workers to have access to company systems and their work while they were on holiday.

The work anywhere and everywhere situation started during Covid with remote working, although talk to people trying to manage remote working and all they say is remote workers are the opposite to over-workers.

They don’t give a damn about the bigger business picture, they say. If they can fit their job around their dog, washing schedule, gym, beauty appointments and the school run, they’re fine.

Woe betide the company that tries to call back workers into the office to improve efficiency, productivity and communicating. 

Answers range from: “I can’t work in the office; I have a dog now.” “I can’t work in the office; I have to do the school run/take meals on wheels to elderly relatives/have to check on my neighbour twice daily” to “I’ve sold my car and hate public transport” and “I’ve put on five stone since Covid so can’t get into my work clothes.”

But the culture of some workplaces and people is that work can’t stop, or the world will end, and they are indispensable.

I get it if you’re running your own business. The buck stops with you. 

On holiday in Italy earlier this month, I deliberately chose an action holiday – cycling - to mark a big birthday and promised my retired partner that I would leave work behind and lock away my phone to enjoy time together.

To avoid the worst attacks of cold turkey, I chose a break where my head and hands would be distracted with the sights and cycle.

It was a revelation; the first sustained break from work emails and events for as long as I could remember.

I didn’t even look at the news, and I’m a news junkie.

We were even away for the General Election – an event I would have pulled an all-nighter to watch it unfold – but I wanted to pass into a new decade living and feeling that there was more to life – and me – than work.

Work was still there when I got back, and I felt rested.

Downtime is essential for physical and mental health. No one gets life points for holiday working, and no one is indispensable in the workplace – but you are to your family and loved ones.

Employers are wrong to allow people to be logged on on holiday, let alone expect it. 

Their obsession impacts on other people, which is selfish. There’s little so annoying being with people on holiday who are constantly connected with what’s going on back home, organising their diaries for their return, setting up theatre trips, watching their Ring doorbell for their gardener’s activities and sorting out restaurant bookings for weeks ahead rather than kicking back and relaxing.

Or worse, those types who want everyone to know they are important, like on a train, who bellow out instructions to their PA or rollicking their manager while you’re sipping your cocktail listening to the cicadas trying to relax and they are sending your stress levels northwards.

All the above is motivated by fear – and who wants to be fearful all the time?

If you can’t control it, head somewhere so remote there is no signal – or stay in some parts of Norfolk with the weakest of phone signal. 

Happy holidaying.

Teachers should be rewarded

Good teachers deserve every penny of any pay rise the government will give.

There is no substitute in a child’s life than cracking teachers, and good teachers are so undervalued.

Without them, we have what we’ve got; skills shortages, uneducated unmotivated young people and schools to be avoided.

The profession needs to attract the best to produce the best so must pay well to attract them.

Choosing to go into teaching should be admired rather than sympathised.

Teachers are never “just teachers.”

They can make real difference to lives and should be rewarded accordingly as one of 
most difficult and rewarding jobs on the planet.