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5 Easy Ways to Ask for Time Off This Summer

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While your kids may be on vacation, you probably are not. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t ask for time off to spend with your family. Here are a few ways to ask for a few days off this summer.

(Photo Credit: Dennis Jarvis/Flickr)

One little girl wrote a letter to her dad’s employer, Google, to ask them to give him his birthday off. A Google senior design manager, Daniel Shiplacoff, replied to the little girl, Katie, and told her that Google would not just give him his birthday off, but the entire week.

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Adorableness aside, let’s hope your kids don’t have to resort to such tactics. Here are five easier ways to get time off for a vacation this summer (or anytime), whether you have kids or not.

1.Plan Ahead – If you plan far enough in advance, many employers will accommodate you. Let them know you’re ready to take on more work the few weeks before your vacation. Be proactive and ask what you can do to minimize the effects of your absence.

2. Make Your Case – Bosses are human, too. Sometimes you just have to make your case for why it’s important for you and/or your family to take a vacation.

You could also try bringing up that the USA is far behind France and the rest of Europe in providing vacations, but you could get branded a problem employee. The smarter thing to do is to focus on the productivity gains companies realize by allowing their workers a chance to rest and recharge.

3.Get Creative – If you’re out of vacation days, ask if you can take some unpaid days off or use sick days that you have built up. (If your company operates under Paid Time Off (PTO) instead of sick time and vacation days and you’ve used them all, this could be harder for you.) If you’ve proven to be a trustworthy and steady employee, many bosses won’t mind seeing your accrued sick-days as a viable option for vacation.

4. Plan Around a Weekend – Make your two days off feel like more by bookending them on a weekend. Even better if you can find a three-day weekend and turn it into five days off! Holidays that many employers acknowledge that also fall adjacent to a weekend are Martin Luther King Day, President’s Day, Good Friday, Memorial Day, and Labor Day.

5. Do a Hybrid Working Vacation – If you’re a freelancer, this is probably the norm, not the exception. But for those who work in an office, if you’re trying to vacation during a busy time of year, offer to do some work while you’re gone and telecommute a few hours a day.

Just make sure you’ve got a great internet connection wherever you’re going, so you don’t miss the important meetings you’ve promised to attend. That might mean modifying your vacation from a cruise to a house a few miles from the beach, but compared to the option of getting to go on vacation at all, it’s worth it. (Plus, the beach is awesome.)

Tell Us What You Think

How are you asking for time off this summer? We want to hear from you! Leave a comment or join the discussion on Twitter.


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These are some great ways to ask for more vacation time. However, even if you don’t have specific dates or vacations planned, you can still get more vacation days during a job offer or a review period. To find a sample negotiation request for extra vacation days, you can check out our free ebook called “Get the Salary You Deserve: 31 Killer Salary Negotiation Letter Sample Templates”. You can find it here: http://www.gosalaryboost.com/blog/2014/7/30/31-salary-negotiation-letter-sample-templates

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