Business executives and the summer holidays
I read an interesting article the other day about a survey carried out amongst business executives and their attitudes towards summer holidays – as you might expect there were the usual statistics about the percentage who check work e-mail, voicemails, those who use their holiday as an opportunity to catch up on work related reading etc.
And this year we hear about the number of people who were not taking holidays or who were cutting back on holiday plans because of the economic climate.
However, the paragraph that caught my eye was that stating that with redundancy rates having doubled to 3% many of us are not taking our annual holiday because of fears of redundancy.
This was backed up by a survey of employers where 23% of employers agreed that their employees were worried about redundancy and job insecurity. As FDs in these businesses we are, or should be, closer to the reality behind this and it would be really interesting to find out how realistic these fears are.
Inevitably with the first anniversary of the credit crunch imminent, rising prices (although I have noticed that my car fuel bills have started to drop) and the weakness in the housing market some people fear a return to the economic climate of the early 90’s.
However, on the evidence of the businesses where I’m working, although things are tight and cashflow is getting more difficult, business enquiries and orders seem to be holding up – in fact the small niche manufacturing company where I work has a record order book.
Am I taking a holiday? Yes I am. Is my Blackberry coming with me? NO!
