Adam Grant

They also needed internal backup on projects.

So rather than just one person on a project, there would be two minimum.

And the vacations were staggered, so they weren't taking their time off at the same time.

Think about your role.

If you took a week off every other month, who would cover for you?

And who would you cover for?

Shashank's team found that based on the nature of their work and the size of their company, they needed to make more adjustments.

So Shashank changed the policy from every seven weeks to every eight weeks.

He set a rule that time off needed to be spaced out.

People on the same team couldn't take back-to-back weeks off.

And employees would stick to one week off at a time, unless it was an extenuating circumstance.

In toxic cultures, time off is a reward earned by working to exhaustion.

Burnout is proof of dedication, and vacations are required to recover.

In healthy cultures, time off is a right granted to everyone.

Well-being is a top priority, and vacations are encouraged to rejuvenate.

Let that sink in.

It's better to have a happy employee working on a task that's slightly delayed than a completely exhausted employee delivering on time.

Shashank can back that up with data.

Even if your workplace doesn't have mandatory vacation time, there's a lesson here for motivating people to take their vacations.

If you ask people why they don't use all their paid time off, most will tell you they feel worried about falling behind and guilty about leaving extra work for their colleagues.