Page 27 of 73

If your company asked you to work for free for an entire week would you agree to it? Most would be quick to respond with a definite no. However, according to an Oxford Economics survey published in 2014, many employees are essentially doing just that. The survey indicates that used vacation days are at the lowest rate in four decades.
The U.S. Travel Association also estimates close to $52.4 billion dollars in benefits are lost every year as employees forfeit paid vacation days. While the numbers alone should inspire a person to take a break, there are other reasons a vacation could be the best thing for an employee and the company. Here are the top four reasons you should use your vacation days.

Often, the first hour of the workday can set the tone for the rest of the day. Are you starting off discombobulated? Are you already late for a meeting? Did you forget what the deliverables are for your latest project? Are you behind even though you’re just out of the gate? Kicking off your day prepared and ready to go can be as simple as using the last hour of each workday to your advantage.

Try these five steps and see if you can smooth out tomorrow’s workday –Today:

Trust is about predictability. It is perhaps the most basic tenet of social behavior. The more predictable someone is, the more you know them. The more you know a person, the more you like them. This is true in both personal and business life.
However, business life offers an element of formality missing from ordinary social life. There is also an element of high stakes and sometimes implicit fear that complicate the picture of trust and make trust in the workplace more difficult to develop. Years ago, business dealings were done over a handshake. Now any business relationship is developed over pages of signed legal documents.
If employees don’t trust each other or their managers, collaboration and communication stagnates. Employee engagement drops. Productivity falls. The workplace becomes unpleasant, even toxic.

Nobody wants to spend extra time at work, but getting everything done in a workday can seem monumental, if not impossible, especially in our digital age when it can feel like we’re on-call 24/7. The key to a happier and more efficient workday is to increase your level of productivity. This means taking a long hard look at how you actually spend your time at work, and then strategically eliminating all of those unnecessary time suckers that you get roped into day in and day out. In addition, planning ahead and setting limits for yourself can go a long way towards getting more done in a shorter amount of time. Here are 5 steps you can start incorporating today to get more done without logging in any extra hours: