There’s a terrible idea I hear once in a while, one that really has to die. “If everything falls apart when I’m on vacation, that’s just job security for me. It proves they need me!”
No, no, no. What it proves is that you don’t care about the health and well-being of your company, which in turn means you don’t care about the people in it—including yourself.
Proving that you don’t care is NOT a good way to prove your worth. Part of your job is to make sure everything goes on like clockwork even when you are not there.
I had a boss once who said, “If you can’t be gone for two weeks and have something in place to get your tasks done in your absence, you are not doing your job.” As a CEO myself, I can pretty much guarantee that a collapse in the Marketing Department registers as a black mark against Marketing from the head down, NOT as a gold star by the name of the manager who left town and let it collapse.
If on the other hand you come back after two weeks and your absence hasn’t caused so much as a ripple, consider it a demonstration of how much you care about the people and the place you left behind.
That’s REAL job security.