While most people look forward to getting out of the office for a vacation, there are some people that are dreading the day, specifically the co-workers of that person taking time off.
A new poll finds that 53% of Americans say covering for a co-worker when they are on vacation is a stressful event, with 37% of Americans feeling resentment towards having to cover for someone while they’re out.
Overall, the survey finds an employee’s workload increases by a third when someone’s out, and it sounds like they aren’t doing such a great job of covering for their vacationing co-worker. In fact, 40% of those surveyed say they phone it in when they cover for someone on vacation, and don’t really care if they do their job well or not.
So, what could change the attitude of these covering co-workers? Well, 51% of employees think workers should get paid extra to cover for co-workers on vacation, with 22% saying they “strongly agree.”
But if it makes employees feel any better, vacationing workers do feel some guilt about leaving their workload for other people to handle In fact, 56% of workers say they feel guilty when their co-workers have to deal with their responsibilities.