With July 4 upon us it means summer vacation season also has arrived. The question, though, is whether or not communicators, who are responsible for safeguarding the reputation of brands, can ever truly be off the clock.
The communicator is not alone. The average U.S. employee who receives paid vacation has taken 54% of those days during the year, says a Glassdoor survey of 2,200+ staffers conducted last summer. This figure is similar to earlier Glassdoor surveys on the subject.
The Glassdoor survey tracks with one from the U.S. Travel Association, which asked vacation-related questions last year of 5,600 U.S. workers, including 1,184 managers. It found the same 54% of staff forfeiting vacation days that Glassdoor did. That was up from 42% in 2013.
The question, of course, is why do Americans, who have fewer vacation days than workers in many other parts of the world, eschew vacation days.
To put things more starkly, did you know the U.S. is the only modern industrial country that lacks a law mandating paid vacations and holidays for workers?
Back to the earlier question, though: Why don’t American workers take their full package of vacation days?
Scott Dobroski, senior director of corporate communications and PR at Glassdoor, says it’s fear. Staff fear falling behind on their work (34%) and believe nobody at their company will be able to fill in for them while they’re on vacation (30%). A small fraction (22%) are so dedicated to their job that they fear taking vacation. The last group (21%) fear being disconnected from their job.
The prescription for PR leaders seems clear: convince your staff to reduce their levels of fear.
[Editor’s Note: Glassdoor’s Dobroski provides media pitching tips in our Stealable Slides article in this edition.]
Turning to communicators and their attitudes toward their ability to leave work at the office, the PR firm Bospar asked communicators during April about their ability to log out from their job (chart 1).
Provided exclusively to PR News, the results are encouraging, though there’s room for improvement.
Letting Go
A majority (65%) is able to disengage from their PR job either every day at 6pm (34%) or on weekends (31%). Just 11% need vacation to be able to log out (let’s hope this group uses all its vacation days).
A concern is 12% say they “never” can log out from their PR gig and 25% can disengage only on weekends or during vacation.
Positives from another question to PR pros are seen in chart 2.
Asked about their best PR quality, the survey found respondents fairly evenly spread across aspects of communications. A total of 29% cited business development, with 20% each for crisis management and media outreach.
Sponsored Content
Bospar also asked more than 1,000 people during April about their attitudes toward sponsored content from a brand they do not follow.
As you can see in chart 4, communicators seeking to engage new audience members with branded content are advised to make such posts newsworthy (31%), educational (36%), visually stimulating (25%) and value-providing (32%).
On the other hand, nearly 26% said they do not read promoted content regardless.
Chart 3 roughly tracks with chart 4, though it’s a bit more encouraging for purveyors of branded content, provided said content is relevant to the reader (44%). Again, more than 25% say they never read advertorial content.