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46% of people surveyed will spend time working while on vacation

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46% of people surveyed will spend part of their vacation time doing work instead of actually enjoying their time off.

Web Watch knows how they feel – during one Vegas vacation, we spent two days in the hotel room overlooking the Bellagio fountains, compiling a PowerPoint presentation for our boss who didn’t understand the meaning of “hey, just because we brought a laptop with us doesn’t mean that we’re available to you 24 hours a day…. especially while we’re in Vegas.”

But Americans are known for taking very little vacation time — or using it incorrectly — compared to our European brethren.  A RECENT SURVEY REGARDING VACATION HABITS has unearthed the following:

  • Men are more likely to work on their summer vacation than women are.
  • 35% of those surveyed will continue to monitor emails, while 22% will check voicemails.

22% also would take phone calls while on vacation.  Web Watch is guilty of this ourselves, having participated on a conference call while riding the animal safari attraction at the Walt Disney World resort’s Animal Kingdom theme park.  Needless to say, those vacationers around us were not too excited to hear about all our business plans while we were driving through the African savannah.

81% bring technology with them on vacation, but in today’s connected age where the average cellphone IS our technology, we’re surprised that this number isn’t higher.  The breakdown of this is that 50% bring a computer, 45% bring a smartphone, and 35% bring a music player.

eReaders like the Kindle are still in the minority, with just 16% bringing those along. 

What the survey did find is that for those who bring a tablet computer with them on vacation, 62% said that had no effect on the likelihood of whether they would work while on vacation or not.

Web Watch likes the concept of vacationing that is enforced for some banking-related industries, where employees are encouraged to take four-week vacations at a time.  The reasoning behind this is that if there was anything nefarious going on at work by that vacationing employee, any coverups that were being done should be easier to discover.  The traditional two-week vacation doesn’t give enough time for bad things to float back to the surface.

Of course, with today’s tech, that vacationing embezzeler may still be able to cook the books from their remote location.  So maybe we should all take four-week vacations anyway, if it doesn’t matter where we are when we do our work in the first place.  Nothing wrong with telecommuting from Tahiti if you can swing it with your boss.