My boss wants me to be available during my vacation abroad

Several months ago I put in my vacation for a week and a half. I'll be traveling to another country and will have almost no access to phone data. This is due to several reasons but the main ones are I don't want to spend money on it and it'd be nice to just have an escape for a week.

Recently my boss found out that this vacation is international and hinted that I should make sure I'm available in case of a work emergency. This felt a little like a joke, but it also seemed like he may have been serious.

How should I tell my boss that I won't be available without sounding confrontational?

15 Answers
15

Remind him that you won't have adequate phone coverage and/or a data plan.

If he really expects you to be on call, then ask whether this on-call time will be covered by an overtime claim (since this is your personal time).

From a personal perspective, answering quick texts/emails while I've been on vacation has been fine, but if your boss is up-front and asking for you to be available, then you should discuss compensation for your time (should you accept the fact you might be working on vacation).

The chances are, however, that he's just joking with you, so make sure of that by stating the "I won't have phone coverage where I'm going" statement.

answering quick texts/emails while I've been on vacation has been fine

Not sure if this can help now, but in future if somebody makes this requests again, laugh and say "good one!". With a bit of luck they'll be too embarrassed to say they're serious.

If they are serious, frown, go still for a moment and look very thoughtful, warn them you won't be very sober for a lot of the time, then ask if you will get compensation for being on call and if they will provide you with a company phone and expenses.

Remind your boss that it's management's responsibility to plan for operational risks, including:

So, periodic vacations serve as practice for more dire circumstances, and should be part of good management routines (like fire drills). In fact, some institutions, such as banks, require their employees to take annual hands-off vacations, to ensure that employees can't hide secrets from coworkers.

Tell your boss that you are willing to cooperate with all necessary knowledge transfer before leaving for vacation.

If your boss still insists on being able to rely on you during vacation, then negotiate a deal that you feel is fair for being on-call (maybe counting only 50% of the duration of your vacation), and recommend that you sit down and work out the business continuity issues after you return, for future planning.

If not - you are being used.

Good tone would be leaving a message saying that you will try to be available for emergency questions (that is, give the impression that this may not be possible and you do not appreciate business in this period of time).

This is one of those rare times I will advocate for not being open and communicating your concerns.

A scheduled, approved vacation is just that, a vacation. Screen your calls, don't check your email, and enjoy yourself.

Be sure to remind your boss approximately a week in advance of your pending vacation, and set an away alert for your email to auto-respond for you, with the date/time when you will return and the contact of who they should direct urgent matters to.

There is nothing unprofessional about enjoying a vacation you have gotten approved and scheduled well in advance. You relaxing and enjoying yourself will be the best thing for both you and the company you work for. You being stressed and constantly interrupted for work matters when you're supposed to be relaxing will just increase the likelihood of burnout, and hurt your productivity, not to mention what the personal impact will be.

90% of the time, what your boss said is just a teasing joke anyway. The other 10% is a sign of a poor work environment, or poor planning on your boss/company.

Some companies seem to believe that PTO - (P)aid (Time) (O)ff - should be viewed as (P)retend (Time) (O)ff.

My previous employer had this view. It didn’t matter whether we had scheduled our PTO well in advance; if business needs required it, then our PTO could and would be canceled, even if already planned and paid for by us. We were always told to "take your laptop" in case we were needed. It did not matter if one was on a "staycation" or on the other side of the world.

After this happened several times to me (and others), we would file a change to our PTO for any days we worked while on scheduled PTO. Work one hour on a scheduled day, and we would charge it to working time, and not count it against our PTO balance. We'd notify HR that we were called to work on a scheduled PTO day. In this case, HR was our friend. I'd then get a nastygram sometime in November that my PTO balance was too high and that I needed to use days before the end of the year. My boss did not it like, but I'd say "HR says I have to take the days. What do you want me to do? I've already worked through other scheduled PTO.”

After several of us did this for a year, then magically, for the following years, we were not available (or called) when on PTO.

You could try something similar: keep track of time worked while on PTO and make sure that it doesn’t get counted against your PTO balance.

You have to decide if you want your vacation to be a constant interruption of 'emergencies'. IMO I would say that you are using your vacation to get away from work for a bit and come back fresh. You are not taking any work with you, no work computer, no work phone, and you will not be answering any phone calls. Period.

There are many studies that note how important this is. If you are THAT important at work, then I suggest when you get back, you ask for a raise. However, I am pretty sure that as with most places you are replaceable.

The core issue here isn't that your boss wants you to be available on vacation; rather, it's that there is inadequate coverage for your statement of work in your absence. You are a "single point of failure", or your boss would not be raising the issue.

This is either the fault of management for not providing another person that you could train as a failover/backup in your absence, or yours for not training your backup to the point where he/she can confidently step into your shoes while you're gone.

Either way, it should be addressed. Bring it up in your next performance discussion; work with your boss to solve the real problem here and it won't come up again.

Reently my boss found out that this vacation is international and hinted that I should make sure I'm available in case of a work emergency. This felt a little like a joke, but it also seemed like he may have been serious.

How should I tell my boss that I won't be available without sounding confrontational?

Explain to HR (or your boss, if it's a small company) that you will be on vacation 24 hours per day. You would be very pleased to work overtime during your vacation and take a company phone with you.

It is possible that there is something that only you can do. That either has value or it does not, so the company either wants it or they don't.

Expecting you to not only work for free but pay part of the costs while on vacation is extremely confrontational and illegal. Surely it must have been a joke, alternatively you can have a fully paid vacation in a 5 star hotel.

You need to politely explain that you earned and are entitled to your vacation, you have already done the work, this is part of the pay and what was agreed upon. What will be next, overtime at straight pay, extended hours, weekends, entertaining clients ...

Politely explain that an opportunity to improve the company profits and earn more money is something you are always interested in discussing. Saying anything else is simply saying "no" (which I have done).

Pretty much every company I've worked for had a boss that would joke that we'd be contactable during our holidays. Of course you don't describe the tone of your boss's "hint" so it's impossible for us to tell whether it was an actual joke or not.

In any case, before you go, hand over any work that can't wait till you get back to whatever colleague is supposed to be covering for you - so sit down with them, explain what you've done so far and how you think they should continue. Then try to come up with any possible emergency that ordinarily only you could deal with, and tell them how to deal with it.

Then head off on holiday, and don't bring up contactability with anyone.

If your boss tells you directly that you need to be contactable, then I'd refer to Snow's answer.

Which country are you in?

At least in my home country and probably most of Europe, the law and courts are quite clear on this question: If you are working even one minute, it is not a vacation. That includes answering a work phone call.

And unless he pays you for being available, he can not have an expectation of you being available. At the end of the day, this is work - you exchange money for your time and skills. Just as he expects you to work for your pay, you can expect to be paid for your work.

I've been on 24/7 call duty in a (long ago) previous job. I would have never agreed to it without the (substantial) pay raise that went along with it. The effect on your nerves is dramatic. Always being available also means that you never really switch off.

Other answers have clearly pointed that the key is this case is negotiation. It is up to you, with the help of the others' considerations, to decide whether to be available or not. Also consider what your law says. You may like to add a tag that indicates the jurisdiction you are working in (e.g. united-states).

In my answer I would like to propose a different aspect of negotiation. Since question explicitly cites that having access to media resources costs money, tools could be another argument.

As soon as you decide to be available, immediately agree with your boss to provide you with a company phone with a SIM card enabled to roaming. This simplifies things a lot, particularly when you agree that you will turn off the phone at night or non-business hours (take time zone into consideration).

How should I tell my boss that I won't be available without sounding confrontational?

I always find difficult to answer such questions when it is unclear what kind of friendliness is between you and boss, and whether boss is Big Boss or a middle manager in the chain of command.

You have two options here: since the first sounded like a joke, you may still want to avoid speaking about the matter and hope the day of vacation arrives. Unfortunately, your boss may remember one day earlier and ask you for a serious meeting.

If you have good suspect that the boss is serious, you should talk to him seriously but not confrontational. Book a meeting with him. I was thinking about this line. Rather than using the line itself, consider the meaning of my statements described later.

Boss, I wanted to discuss again about my vacation. It is my understanding that you need all personnel available in case of emergencies, right? I understand that the we are running a busy time, but I kindly ask you to consider that I need to cut off to be healthy and productive. I was really waiting for this vacation from long, and I have planned a lot of things to do in Sokovia keeping me busy all the time. Let me instruct someone about my tasks so he/she can back me up!

cut off

Analysing the statements:

For the rest, it's all your choice if you want to be available

This type of behavior on the part of employers is not unusual. These employers believe that an employment contract is a form of voluntary slavery, and weekends and vacations are not acceptable reasons for being unavailable. Now that you know that your employer falls into this category you might want to consider finding a new employer - and you know to ask about "vacation on call" during your next series of interviews.

In addition, there's option B - don't answer the phone if it's your boss or co-worker calling. Your call.

Best of luck.

This behavior from a manager signals that the company has no cover for your role.

It used to be that companies would tell you to spend your own money to make sure you can be called. It's modern times. I would ask the boss if he expects you to be on call, that you are given a company international phone. That isn't unreasonable as most companies have cell phones to give to their employees on a per need basis. Otherwise, tell him that your phone is not reliable and you will make every attempt to return calls or emails.

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