According to a recent survey of UK holiday makers, almost three quarters of those surveyed feared missing out on the latest gossip in their office.
The survey, conducted by Sunshine.co.uk, gathered results from 1652 adults who worked full-time and had been abroad in the last 12 months. The questions were aimed at gathering the respondent’s feelings towards people and situations that they had left at home.
The majority of respondents felt a greater anxiety in missing out on things that happen at work whilst they are away, rather than in their personal lives. Only 380 people who participated in the survey were worried about missing out on a family trip or family news, whilst a whopping 74 per cent feared they would miss out on the most recent office gossip.
As well as office gossip, workers also find it hard to leave work actually in the office, with 81 per cent of people worried about missing out on important tasks whilst they were away. Also, of those work obsessed people, 24 per cent had contacted the office and 32 per cent had admitted to doing work whilst on holiday.
Conversely it seems that it is not just the work and gossip that people miss, as 18 per cent of those surveyed kept in contact with fellow work colleagues through social media networks, such as Facebook and Twitter. As well as keeping in contact with work colleagues, around 50 people admitted to asking workmates to not arrange any office socials whilst they were on holiday.
Speaking of the findings, Chris Brown, Co-founder of Sunshine.co.uk, stated: “Fear of missing out is indeed a relatively common phenomenon and it’s not difficult to see why it’s quite common among holidaymakers.
“When you are thousands of miles away, it’s easy to start getting anxious about what you could be missing, whether that’s actual work you may need to catch up on when you get back, or just who said what behind whose back in the office.”
Are you one of those people who do work whilst on holiday? Do you worry that you may miss out on the office gossip, or are you glad of the break and happy to leave work at the office?
