CEO explains simple way he deters employees from ‘quiet vacationing’

• Quiet vacationing, where employees take time off without telling their bosses, is on the rise.
• CEO David Barkoe said his employees don’t feel the need to sneak away to take time off.
• He advocates for trusting employees to get their work done wherever and whenever works for them.

Quiet vacationing — or taking time off or working from across the world without telling your boss — is growing in popularity.

Millennials, in particular, seem to be especially fond of the trend. A recent Harris Poll found that nearly four out of 10 millennial respondents admitted to taking time off without informing higher-ups.

So what’s a boss to do if he wants to stop employees from sneaking out of the office behind his back?

David Barkoe, the CEO and founder of Florida-based PR firm Carve Communications, said it all comes down to creating a culture of trust with your employees.

“Go live your life, but get the job done,” Barkoe told Business Insider while describing his approach. “I’m going to trust you from minute one, from the moment I hire you, to just get the job done, however you feel best to do it.”

In practice, that culture takes a lot of forms. Sometimes, it’s an employee working a couple hours early in the morning so they can sign off early to make their kid’s swim meet. Other times, it’s an employee taking a three-week trip to Europe where the first week is PTO, and the next two, they simply work from another time zone.

Barkoe said the open and flexible culture, which is actively encouraged and practiced by higher-ups, makes it so employees do not feel like they need to sneak away just to get a break.

“It’s absolutely culture-driven,” he said.

Barkoe believes a reason people are taking quiet vacations is because they feel like their employer is not giving them trust and respect, so they just take the vacation they want anyway.

As for bosses who are worried having such a flexible culture would result in less work getting done, Barkoe has found the opposite to be true. When Carve went fully remote in 2020, Barkoe said he realized very quickly they were never going back to the office.

“It was just working. People were more motivated,” he said.

Although it may be different at a company with thousands of employees, Barkoe said, “As a small organization, if you’re not doing your job, it’s pretty hard to hide.” He added that if someone does take advantage, then they’re probably not the right person for your team, regardless.

Ashton Mathai, the associate director of content at Barkoe’s firm, told BI she fully takes advantage of Carve’s unlimited PTO policy and work-from-anywhere culture.

Last year, Mathai traveled to Europe for two months. She took 10 days of PTO to start the trip and then spent the remainder of the time working from places like Scotland, Amsterdam, Portugal, and Italy. Because she was in a different time zone, she’d often work 1 p.m. to 8 p.m. local time and spend the morning doing a tour or going to the beach.

“I would live my life in the morning and then in the afternoon, night I would do my work,” she said.

Mathai said before she went, her bosses told her they had total confidence in her that she would get her work done while she was gone.

“It wasn’t a threat. It was truly total confidence,” she said. “So I kind of went there knowing like I want to make them proud. I want to make myself proud and do my work.”

In addition to working from abroad, she said she also takes plenty of full-fledged PTO. Earlier this year, she traveled to India for two weeks with family and didn’t work.

“There’s a lot of encouragement from leadership, from David himself, to take time off,” Mathai said of Barkoe.

Barkoe said a lot of companies have unlimited PTO in theory but that there’s a difference between saying it and doing it. He tries to actively encourage and call people out, in a good way, when they take advantage of Carve’s flexible culture.

“You just got to have the mindset and the willingness to say personal life is part of the work culture,” he said. “Not the other way around, where work culture is part of the personal life.”