Hush holidays are perhaps a well-kept secret, but HR teams should be aware they are growing in popularity.

In this blog, we’ll look at what hush holidays are and how businesses can cope with the growing trend.

What is a hush holiday?

After working from ‘home’ took the world by storm, now a growing number of employees are jetting off and working from ‘holiday’ instead.

Employees are taking their work laptops and phones and maximising their leisure time, for the ultimate work-life balance.

Despite feeling their productivity is unaffected, many are keeping their ‘bleisure’ (business and leisure) time on the down low, not telling their employer they intend to travel, for fears their plans may get squashed.

Increasing in popularity

One Poll surveyed 2,000 people and found 65% of respondents had taken a bleisure trip last year, arriving early or extending their stay once they had finished working. One remote worker had reportedly worked in 78 different countries!

Now Covid restrictions are fully lifted, there is no sign of this trend slowing down, as many people look to travel and make up for lost time. A survey by Wakefield Research showed 56% of adults say they are very likely or extremely likely to go on a hush trip this year, while 36% of Gen X and Millennials have already planned one.

Could hush holidays work?

Although this growing trend could be a scary one for many businesses, it doesn’t need to be.

Many experts are encouraging companies to embrace this working travel trend, also known as ‘workcationing’ (for a well-kept secret there are definitely a lot of terms for it!) as it is positive for employees’ mental health and staff retention.

Communicate

Having an open and honest dialogue with your staff is definitely the way forward to build trust and ensure your business is not kept in the dark. You may need to put additional procedures in place to make this style of working possible.

Monitor holiday

Typically, staff are not using any annual leave for their hush holidays, so this could be something you choose to discuss. LeavePlanner makes it easy to approve leave requests quickly and monitor your staff’s remaining holiday entitlement.

Offer flexible hours

Offering flexible working hours is a way to make it work and can compensate for any time differences when working abroad.

LeavePlanner makes it easy to create flexible working timetables and monitor the hours being worked, to ensure productivity for any wannabe digital nomads.

Arrange your free trial today. For easy to use absence management software, call Steve on 01252 636 070 or email support@leaveplanner.com.

Pssst! Check out our new all-in-one system, HR Planner, which incorporates an easy-to-use leave management solution, designed specifically with SMEs in mind.