The new trend is the “quiet holiday”. To be precise, the “hidden vacation” is explained… People are now taking regular vacations while they are at work, as part of a trend called “quiet vacations.”

There is no definition of a “quiet holiday”. It can involve a variety of behaviors: traveling to a distant place and saying nothing while doing your work, or not working but keeping your mouse moving to appear connected, in the hope that no one will notice your productivity drop.

On the one hand, this sounds like an awesome new feature that comes with remote work. Answering your 10th email of the day while sipping a margarita on the beach sounds a lot nicer than doing it from an office while a colleague next to you loudly eats their salad. On the other hand, people are under such pressure at work that they feel like they can’t take real time off to disconnect from everything or even tell their boss that they’re going to work outside the office for a while.

The whole conversation about quiet and vacations has been shaken up by a recent survey by Harris Poll about the culture outside the office. 28% of workers said they’ve taken time off from work without telling their boss—basically, they’re out of the office, but on “flag” leave. Reminds you of something;

Millennials have embraced this practice, with 37% saying they’ve snuck out of work.

Holidays

And it’s not that these workers are unhappy with the time off their companies offer: 83% of respondents said they were satisfied with their company’s paid time off policy.

The issue seems to be that employees don’t feel they can really use the time they are given. Eight out of 10 participants said they feel pressure to always be available, while others cited heavy workloads as the reason.

Almost half said they felt stressed when asking for time off, and the majority wished the workplace culture placed more value on taking breaks. Many workers moved their mouse to make it look like they were online and some scheduled out-of-hours messages to give the impression that they were working overtime!

The problem isn’t that people are working from elsewhere, especially if it doesn’t hurt their productivity. The bigger problem is what this means for their relationship with work and the motivations that have been cultivated in their companies. For people to feel they have to lie about their whereabouts is not a positive sign.

Some of the fundamental principles behind the “quiet holiday” are positive. We live in an age where many people can work from anywhere and have more flexibility to achieve a better work-life balance. The problem is the “insidious” nature of the whole venture… If the bosses have listening ears, small miracles can happen…