It is largely an expat problem but it is a sad one.

I met this young man who has just returned from a three month leave at home to find that the hierarchy in his office has change pattern in the ninety days he was away and the new supervisor and the equally new section head have already filled in his vacancy and glossed over it and this guy has now been sidetracked to some outpost in the branch office. Either he accepts or he takes a hike, both being acceptable to his company. Not the best way to return to the job since he is already depressed at leaving his wife and kids for the next two to three years plus maybe more.

Now, he has to contend with the shock of the loss of his job merely because office politics have won the day.

That, and the fact that if you do not go on leave every year and accumulate it then you do run the risk of becoming redundant. If your company can manage to do without you for ninety days what is the great need for you. Ergo, you have made yourself redundant.

To a great extent, both the company and the individual are culpable for this ongoing issue of long leave. First, if people, even workers were given time off every year they would work better, be less prone to depression and their families would be in a position to enjoy the presence of the father or mother figure that much more often. When you go after three years you are a stranger and it takes days to adjust on both sides and then it is time to leave and the barren future stares at you like a monster.

There is now an increasingly outdated concept that it saves on tickets. True, but the cost of the ticket would be compensated several times over by the sheer output from a high morale workforce than from one that is in the dumps.

Also, the risk of being pushed about by the changes that have occurred in your absence would be far less dramatic in one month than in three.

Perhaps it is time for companies to look at this problem from a more humane angle and yet discover that they are improving their productivity and boosting their bottom line. That would be so much nicer for everyone.

And it is not just the labour workforce, which sort of becomes the central point. Even at the lower middle management support level people have a hoarding instinct. They tend to collect leave like people collecting shells on a beach. They sort add up compensatory offs, overtime, sick leave, privileged leave, carried forward from last year leave, religious holidays, even their weekly offs and the total becomes a grand 105 days or something and off they go laden with gifts to reunite with the family.

Seasons change and they haven’t come back or even been in touch. After all, this is all earned leave so they are doing only what is allowed by the law of the organisation. Fine, but what is on paper need not translate that pleasantly in real life.

The section head walks in and says he hasn’t seen so and so for weeks, where is he? On leave. How long? A little over three months.

The seed is planted. The mini-boss knows who exactly is going to be the first choice when it comes to cutbacks.

If a company is downsizing it makes sense to let go of those who stay away so long that when they return innovations force them to spend another thirty days getting the rhythm of the place. Then they actually can be out of synch with whatever developments have occurred.

It is gratifying that many forward thinking companies are now adopting an annual leave approach both from the point of common sense as from the point of good health and mental comfort. The worker should also espouse the logic behind an annual break rather than return to that squirreling mindset of accumulating leave.