It's silly season, and of course holidays are the topic of the moment.

So when a survey from the IT Job Board about holidays came across my desk, it deserved a read. People, it seems, are not taking their holiday entitlement:  only two thirds (66 percent) of Brits use their allocated holiday entitlement, compared with just over one third (41 percent) for Germany

In the IT department this is marked by a third claiming a couple of days as pay instead of holiday, but in Germany a fifth are missing out on two weeks or more.

Why? The answer may lie here:

- slightly under half of IT workers find the extra workload ahead of taking a holiday hugely stressful - and with all that manic tying off of ends and delegating, I can identify with that one;

- 40 percent of Brits said they would look at emails once a day; and 35 percent of Germans advised they would go online a few times per week;

- two thirds of British and 40 percent of German IT pros take their mobile phone abroad;

HR Related Bits that I come across Along the Way!

Both of these are greetings and I wonder how different our relationships at work would be if we used them – although I  would suggest that Namaste might be easier to say :-)

When you greet someone with hello what are you thinking about? I’d suggest very little. It’s often just a word at the top of an email or the start of the conversation and is simply a means to the rest of the conversation. I wonder if the other person even registers it.

Paddle Finding with Alison Smith

Performance appraisals/reviews – it’s time for the mid-year “assessment.” And so the news and magazine articles are ramping up, too. Last month’s issue of Talent Management featured an opinion piece that puts the burden on you, the employee, to prove your performance worth during the review process.

Ugh. While I agree that the performance review process, in its clinical form, is a good idea (talk to people on a bi- or semi-annual basis to set goals and review progress), it quickly gets awfully messy as soon as you add humans to the mix. Why is that? The reason seems obvious to me.

If I’m sitting in the seat of the person receiving the performance appraisal, I feel the feedback I’m hearing is coming from one person’s perspective and may be calling up “old news” – stuff that happened ages ago. As the author of the Talent Management article says: “Without assistance, managers are unlikely to remember all of each employee’s valuable accomplishments.”

Strategic Employee Recognition: by Derek Irvine

Pamela reminded me the other week in her response to a blog that appreciation is great so long as it’s sincere. I certainly agree that being thanked when it’s just something on someone’s to do list doesn’t quite have the same impact. I’d also suggest that the lack of sincerity is often picked up by the other person and can have other less than intended repercussions.

Paddle Finding with Alison Smith