On Holiday With Your Work Phone Switched On? Why Switching Off Is Productive Too

Some holidays start with a suitcase and end with the work phone in your hand. A "quick" email, a WhatsApp from the boss, a call that "will only take a minute", and suddenly the beach becomes a small, sticky extension of the office. Your body is away, but your head is still stuck between unfinished tasks, notifications and matters that really ought to wait.

The conversation about switching off comes back every summer because many people rest less than it seems. Changing city, sleeping on a different mattress or posting a nice photo is not enough. For a holiday to really work, you also need mental distance. In other words, stop watching your inbox as if it were a delicate houseplant that dies unless you check it every two hours.

Resting is not disappearing, it is better planning

Some countries have written a right to disconnect into law. Spain protects workers' digital disconnection during rest time, leave and holidays, and Australia has introduced a similar right. The UK has no specific legal right to disconnect: the idea has been debated, but for now it is mostly down to employers' own policies. What UK law does give you is the right to paid annual leave, minimum rest periods and a limit on average weekly working hours unless you opt out. Our holiday pay calculator shows what your leave is worth.

Beyond the legal framework, there is a practical point: a company that does not let people stop properly ends up paying for the exhaustion later. Someone who comes back from holiday as tired as they left does not return with more energy, but with less patience, less focus and more desire to browse job adverts on the quiet.

Switching off does not mean abandoning your team or leaving fires burning. It means preparing your absence in advance: sharing out tasks, leaving clear information, setting up an out-of-office reply, naming a contact person and telling the urgent apart from what is only awkward because nobody planned it.

The problem with "just one quick thing"

The phrase sounds harmless, but it has teeth. "Just one quick thing" can wreck a whole afternoon of rest, especially if it means finding documents, replying to a client or making a decision. Often it is not the length of the message that drains you, but the feeling of always being available.

For employees, this constant availability creates a kind of invisible on-call duty. For companies, normalising it can be costly. If everything is urgent, nothing really is. And if every absence depends on the person staying connected, the problem is not the phone: it is the organisation.

What employers can do before the holidays

Companies do not need a hundred-page policy to improve. Sometimes clear rules and common sense are enough. Before someone goes away, it is worth reviewing what is outstanding, who takes over each task, which channels will be used in a genuine emergency and what can wait until they are back.

It also helps when managers lead by example. If a manager sends emails while their team is on leave, even with "no need to reply", the real message may be different. Workplace culture is not built only with internal documents. It also shows in the time messages arrive. Employers experimenting with shorter working weeks have run into the same lesson, as described in our article on the four-day week in practice: time off only works if the work is organised for it.

What you can do before you go

You can also prepare your own switch-off. A useful out-of-office message, finishing priority tasks, letting clients or colleagues know, and agreeing who covers what all reduce the noise. If you have a work phone, it makes sense to agree whether it should be switched off, on silent or kept only for real emergencies.

A good absence is not improvised at four o'clock on your last day. It is prepared with a little map, so nobody has to call you asking where the treasure, the invoice or the mysterious file is.

Switching off makes the work better too

Rest is not a decorative reward. It is part of how a healthy company works. Holidays are for recovering energy, easing built-up tension and coming back with a clearer head. When an organisation respects that space, it is not only looking after people. It is also protecting the quality of the work they will do afterwards.

That is why switching off your work phone should not be seen as a lack of commitment. Sometimes it is exactly the opposite: a way to come back better, think more calmly and avoid turning August into an office with a sun umbrella. And if your employer expects you to be reachable every day of your leave, that is worth weighing up next time you compare job offers.

Looking for an employer that respects your time off? Browse current jobs in the UK on Jober.