Megan McArdle proclaims that employers “shouldn’t just give their employees vacation days; they should force them to actually leave the office and go on vacation”:
I don’t really need to extol the benefits to an employee of a few days off, but I will say that everyone needs to take a break. Over time I’ve noticed that if I go too long between holidays — more than about three months — I start to feel like I’m forcing it, plodding through the day’s stories rather than actually attacking something I’m interested in. That’s a pretty common experience among the people I know. Periodically, you have to stop and give the well a chance to refill. I don’t think it’s an accident that creative people frequently report having breakthroughs after they’d stopped working for a bit and started thinking about something else.
She insists that “even the most upstanding, outstanding employee should not be so vital to your firm’s operations that you cannot afford to let them go for a week or two”:
What if this person leaves the firm? What if they are killed in a car crash? Periodically preparing to do without this person means that if and when they do depart, you will not be plunged into an instant crisis.
The Dish 