We’ve all been there. You’ve had your two weeks spending time with friends and family in exotic locations, drinking wine at lunchtime and generally thinking that life’s pretty damn good. And then the rude awakening hits. It’s time to go back to work.
You arrive back in the office, having woken up early for the first time in what seems like forever, to be confronted with more emails and messages than you know what to do with. On top of this, you’re jet lagged, you’ve come home to a pile of bills, the washing machine has broken down and the rain outside doesn’t show any sign of stopping for at least a couple of months. Everyone’s asking if you had a nice holiday; all you want to do is crawl under a rock and sleep.
Theoretically, this makes absolutely no sense. You’ve had two weeks off and everyone, including you, expected you to come back feeling refreshed and ready go to. So why do you feel like it’s all a bit meaningless and overwhelming, even after the jet lag has passed.
Post-holiday blues is relatively common, no matter whether you’re the office admin assistant or the CEO. However, the world of work simply isn’t set up for it. You come back to work, block a few hours to catch up on your email and then you need to get back to routine. After all, it’s your job or your business and it’s what you need to be doing. The fact that you are probably performing abysmally and making mistakes isn’t the issue; it’s more important that you are where you are supposed to be.
When someone has been off sick, or off on maternity leave, best practice is to arrange some sort of return-to-work pattern, be it phased increases to working time, keeping in touch days or flexible hours. A holiday may not have lasted as long as these absences, but the contrast between the experiences while on leave and daily life back at work can mean a huge mental hurdle to get over. Yet despite this, very few companies prioritise post-holiday return-to-work activities.
One school of thought would be to say ‘put up and shut up’, but if you’re being paid to do a job and turn up without being mentally present, you’re going to do nothing but annoy colleagues, look miserable all day and be as useful as a pile of sand in the Sahara. If it’s your own business, are your mistakes or general lack of motivation going to have an impact on your clients and staff?
So what can we all do to help the transition from the top of the world back to reality?
- For a start it pays to have a handover conversation before going away. This should focus on the work you’ll be missing and what’s likely to be on your desk when you return.
- Returning to find that nothing has been done in your absence and work has piled up can be overwhelming and demoralising, while returning to find out that everything has run like clockwork without you may make you question your presence in the organisation even further! It’s therefore about striking the right balance and ensuring that you and your colleagues are agreed on the priorities. Similarly, it’s also important to have a second handover conversation as soon as possible after returning to help you reintegrate and feel part of the organisation rather than cast adrift in an office where everyone else simply has no time to fill you in on what’s been happening.
- Additionally, if you know you’re going to come back to a load of domestic chores, jet lag, or just are a regular sufferer of the blues, perhaps consider taking an extra day or half day before returning to work to have a softer landing. It may use some more holiday time or you’ll need to make up the time elsewhere, but if your first day back is going to be torture for all concerned, isn’t it the right thing to do?
