The Debate: Should annual leave be enforced at Christmas?
Should it be mandatory to take annual leave at Christmas? We put two office workers head to head in this week’s Debate
YES: A full shutdown removes ambiguity, giving everyone permission to disconnect guilt-free
The period between Christmas and New Year sits in a peculiar corporate twilight zone. For businesses that allow holiday during this time, it often becomes a week of professional panto: a skeleton crew navigating out-of-office replies, nudging tasks into frustrating holding patterns until normal service resumes in January.
At Holmes Noble, we introduced a mandatory Christmas shutdown several years ago, with consistently strong results. The executive search market is typically quieter over the festive period, and our team returns genuinely recharged, focused, energised and ready to deal with the inevitable deluge of emails and the pace of a busy Q1.
That said, a successful shutdown doesn’t happen by accident. It requires discipline in the preceding week: clear boundaries, thoughtful preparation and, above all, trust in your team to step away fully.
Partial closures create only the illusion of productivity. Those who stay “on” make limited progress, while those on leave remain mentally tethered to their inboxes. A full shutdown removes this ambiguity entirely, giving everyone permission to disconnect without the low-grade anxiety of being the only one offline.
In a climate where burnout represents a measurable commercial risk, protecting a period of collective rest is one of the most effective retention tools available.
For businesses that can, it’s time to stop treating this break as optional and mandate the shutdown offering guilt-free rest and setting the business up for a sharper, more focused start to the financial year.
Amy Speake is chief executive at Holmes Noble
NO: Working over Christmas is an excellent get-out-of-jail-free card for dodging family events
I don’t agree with annual leave being compulsory over Christmas. Not everyone wants – or needs – to be herded into festive downtime at the expense of other life events they might wish to prioritise more. While some people dream of family ice skating and matching pyjamas, I dream of a blissfully silent inbox and the joy of catching up on all the tasks I’ve been side-eyeing since October. Working over Christmas is like a professional spa retreat; no meetings, no Team pings, no surprise “quick favour” that takes three hours. Just me and my planning, a Christmas film in the background and my hand in a box of Celebrations.
And, crucially, the Christmas office has its own lovely micro-culture. What greater kinship is there than when you and another festive-season straggler quietly agree to kick something into the new year? The relative calm creates little pockets for proper conversations, where you actually get to know people without the usual conveyor belt of deadlines. Everything feels looser, lighter and 2026 feels reassuringly far away.
It’s also an excellent get-out-of-jail-free card for dodging certain family gatherings. “Sorry, I’m working” is socially bulletproof. A gift in and of itself.
My annual leave is basically gold dust; I have to hoard it to cover performing at the Edinburgh Fringe every year – magical but requiring the kind of leave request usually reserved for weddings or babies. When your leave pot is that precious, being told how to use a portion of it feels a bit of a liberty, and leaves you wondering which thing you’ll be sacrificing – trying to do a home move around Zoom or missing Hannah’s hen (unless you don’t want to go to Hannah’s hen, in which case see above!)
Leave is personal. For some, Christmas is restorative. For others, it’s stressful, simply not their thing, or lonely. Plus some of us genuinely like working when the world goes quiet.
If businesses want everyone to take a breather, great, but make it a gift. But forcing people to burn their own leave? Dictated festive leave is the HR equivalent of getting a Lynx Africa gift set: technically well-intentioned, but absolutely not what you asked for.
Vix Leyton is a comedian and consumer expert
THE VERDICT
To take leave, or not to take leave: that is the question in corporatopia at Christmastime. So would we rather the choice be taken out of our hands?
First things first, this question is not about professions that actually need to work over Christmas (hospitality, emergency services, etc). We’re talking about the deskjockeying class, those who absence from work will, let’s admit it, largely go unnoticed by anyone not in their immediate five-meter office remit, and maybe not even by them.
Given that, as Ms Speake attests to, their working over the Christmas period is largely fruitless, creating only an “illusion of productivity”. A company shutdown gets rid of such festive coasters. Then again, what some call slacking Ms Leyton calls “micro-culture”, arguing that it’s this Christmas calm that makes working over the period so joyful. We don’t doubt that, though we’re far more taken by her latter argument, that leave is personal. Being trusted to manage one’s own leisure should ultimately be at the behest of the individual, even if that might mean a little bit of skiving.