#PwCTakesABreak

Over the holidays this year, you won’t find me in the office or checking my email dozens of times a day. PwC is taking a firm-wide holiday break and I plan to spend the time with my family – going to church, putting together a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle and watching the movie “Christmas Vacation”. 

I consider myself so lucky to work at a firm that shuts down over the holidays. Most of our competitors do not and I don’t hear many of my friends getting this kind of gift from their employers. While much of the rest of the world gets stressed trying to juggle work and holiday responsibilities, our people are getting some much needed rest and relaxation during this time.

Search the hashtag #PwCTakesABreak on Twitter and you’ll see what I mean.

Our hard working employees are recharging in big and small ways – enjoying the outdoors with friends or signing up for a knitting class. They are traveling to places like London, Disney World or grandma’s house and posting pictures of serene fireplace settings at their own homes and toy-filled living rooms as toddlers learn to walk.

One of our people used the break last year to potty train a two year old, grateful to have the time to focus on this parenting necessity. Another used the time to move their 83-year-old mother across the country and into their home. And one mother who works here shared on social media that the holiday break last year for her involved two urgent care trips and one ER visit with her daughter who got double pink eye. Not an ideal way to spend the holidays, but she said she was so grateful to have the uninterrupted time to be with her daughter and get her well.

However they chose to spend it, we believe this is more than just a great perk for our people. It’s the firm’s way of celebrating and acknowledging all the hard work our partners and staff do throughout the year. Their incredible dedication to clients is demonstrated over and over. The commitment is clear.  

We started taking a holiday break in 2009. This year it will last ten days, from December 24 to January 4. We will close our computers, turn off our work email and take a true break. One day is a vacation day, one is a personal day and the rest are considered a guilt-free gift of holidays and down time.

The point is to give people a true rest and we have discovered a huge value in all of us taking it at the same time. It builds a real sense of community and is freeing because you don’t have to worry that while you rest, your colleagues are picking up the slack, or that you’ll return to a gigantic stack of emails to plow through.

A survey by Skift finds 41% of Americans didn’t take a single day off in 2015. This is such a shame because research finds real benefits to this kind of downtime. Studies have shown regular vacation days:

• reduce stress
• lead to higher positive emotional levels and less depression
• lower blood pressure
• and even make people 20 to 30% less likely to have a heart attack or die from heart disease

We are a client served business and we work for many Fortune 500 companies and the US government so we make sure when we take this break that our people give advance notice about our plans and if there are client deadlines or commitments during this time, of course we make those a true priority. For the handful of our people that have to work through the holidays, we make sure they take their R&R break when their project ends. But the vast majority of our people are able to take this time off.

The holiday gift of relaxation, restoration and recharging serves our employees because it is a chance to really catch our breath from all the hard work we did in the calendar year that’s winding down. It also benefits our clients because it gives us a fresh, renewed sense of energy when we resume business in the New Year.

So I’m off. I’ll see you soon, rested and ready for a productive and exciting 2017!

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