Artificial Intelligence can help to ease the holiday logjam at work: Craig Naylor-Smith

But it can also shine a light on areas where the opposite is true; departments where team members either struggle to take time away or to get the amount of time that they need, when they need it.

The reason for this? Their time off wouldn’t just mean minor delays or additional points on a ‘to-do’ list, but entire processes grinding to a halt.

The good news is that technology offers a solution. Here’s how.

Back-office departments like finance can be particularly vulnerable to creating these ‘lock in’ environments where time off is viewed as something to be delicately navigated rather than something to look forward to. These are parts of a business where the need for specialist skills can mix with a demand for an ‘always-on’ service to create a perfect storm of pressure.

To alleviate some of this, firms may try to cross-train team members on multiple roles. But sometimes staff may feel guilty for taking time off even if they can because they know just how challenging a few days or weeks may be for their colleagues.

In other cases, businesses may try to tackle these bottlenecks by hiring temporary staff. But this can be easier intended than done, particularly in roles that require specialist skills, organisational experience or deep relationships with clients.

Fundamentally, this is a wellbeing problem.

It goes without saying that a healthy, attractive working environment encourages team members to take time off. And, crucially, this isn’t just about ticking the ‘can take annual leave’ box in a statutory sense. It’s about creating a culture where diligent staff are empowered to step away, fully, when they need to and disconnect.

Artificial intelligence and intelligent automation are two technologies that can be powerful tools when addressing this issue.

When we talk about AI and automation’s transformational potential in business, we often highlight its capacity to enable people and organisations to ‘do more for less’.

The focus here is often on its very real bottom line potential: its ability to unlock significant time and cost efficiencies.

But there’s also a very important wellbeing benefit that businesses mustn’t overlook.

By working alongside team members and complementing their uniquely ‘human’ skills, AI and automation can provide a flexible extra pair of digital ‘hands’ to help manage workloads – both in day-to-day work, but also during times of capacity crunches.

This can enable and empower team members to take time away because they can pass work on to others with the knowledge that there’s a support system in place. The ‘more’ that this technology delivers becomes more time with families, more time with friends and more time to recharge.

Craig Naylor-Smith, is the CEO of Parseq