The health benefits of mandated leave
Mark Honeychurch - 3rd March 2025
The Christmas before last, I received a work email informing me of the holiday dates during which our office would be closed, and that for these dates I would need to book annual leave. I guess in an attempt to soften the blow of people needing to use over half of their annual leave on days outside of their choosing, management decided to let us know of the benefits of taking leave:
Our Christmas shutdown is the ideal time to get some down time in order to rest and relax. On an individual level, the benefits of taking leave are significant. It can help to:
- reduce stress – which in turn lowers the risk of anxiety and depression.
- improve mood – helping to ease social relationships.
- boost immunity – people who take more holiday time are known to not get sick as often.
Of course, this email prickled me as those look very much like medical claims! So I quickly sent a response:
Are you sure that taking leave “boosts” your immunity? This seems like a pseudoscientific claim to me, not least of all because, from what I understand, making someone’s immune system more active leads to auto-immune diseases, and is not a good thing to do. As Pfizer says on their website:
“Though we all want strong, robust immune systems, “boosting” or “strengthening” the immune system isn’t particularly desirable. In fact, autoimmune diseases such as lupus and rheumatoid arthritis occur when the immune system over-reacts and attacks healthy tissue in the body.”
I’m also a little concerned about the claims made about anxiety and depression – these are both serious mental health conditions, and I’d be surprised if there’s a causal link between them and taking (mandated) annual leave. They are complex issues, and usually have complex causes, including but not limited to family situations, workplace conditions, genetic predisposition and brain chemistry.
In short, I’d recommend steering clear of making any medical claims about annual leave!
I didn’t receive any response to this email, but I can tell you that last year’s Christmas leave email from management did not contain any dubious health claims.
On top of the misinformation, a quick Google search found that this text wasn’t even original - someone at my workplace had simply lifted it from a LinkedIn post, without any kind of attribution.
I’m not sure whether it’s better or worse that these claims were simply plagiarised, and from LinkedIn of all places - the social media platform that seems to almost exclusively consist of stolen content designed to make the person posting it look like they’re a self-made, dynamic, proactive go-getter who’s more employable than everyone else on the site. Pick me, pick me!