The average full time worker in the UK is entitled to 25 days of annual leave each year — but for many of us, that’s simply not enough.
How are you supposed to see family, go on holiday, catch up on life admin and actually get some rest, in just five weeks out of the year?
That’s where the soft-off day comes in.
Hailed as a ‘corporate hack’, a soft-off day is where employees technically work from home — but don’t engage in any actual work tasks whatsoever.
The idea is that you can kick back and relax, without using up any of that precious annual leave.
But while the so-called corporate baddies on TikTok are encouraging their followers to book in a soft-off, career coach Hannah Salton warns Metro that it might just be a slippery slope to getting sacked.
How do you have a ‘soft off day’?
Everyone has their own little hacks to make the working day more bearable – sneaking in an extra 20 minutes at lunch or quickly setting your Slack to active before hitting Snooze on your alarm.
One anonymous employee told Metro that early on in her new job, she made sure to switch the settings on her laptop to give her a helping hand: ‘I adjusted it so that it doesn’t go into ‘sleep’ mode unless I close the lid.
‘It means whenever I shower or go out, I look like I’m still online.
‘Sometimes I’ll even set up my laptop, and ask my mum to move the mouse around every now and again’.
Another sleepy worker shared that she’ll ‘nap for 15 minute increments’, waking up only for a few seconds only to tap a couple of words onto her keyboard.
Some of the most brazen employees refer to themselves as ‘key jammers’, workers who will place an object on their keyboard that’s heavy enough to press down the spacebar, to make it appear like they’re hard at work.
One ‘key jammer’ admitted to Metro that they’ve started ‘putting a banana in its skin onto the mousepad’, as it keeps their Teams status active without having to wiggle their mouse.
According to TikTok, the trick with a ‘soft off day’ is all about strategy. You can’t book a bungee jump in the middle of the day or abandon your laptop for seven hours while you’re at bottomless brunch.
But you can rest while doing the bare minimum, keeping your work close enough that you can jump back into action if needed.
Creator Jaqueline Nicole even went as far as posting the ideal ‘work from home soft off day’ routine on social media.
Starting with a lie in (duh), the day typically consists of mooching around the house, perhaps taking a longer shower than usual, and checking in on emails every few hours, all before logging off at least an hour early to enjoy the rest of your evening.
Why are employees having ‘soft off days’?
While expert Hannah says she definitely understand why this trend has become so appealing, it shouldn’t become a regular habit.
‘We’re tired,’ she says. ‘We’re working hard, juggling a lot, and no one is firing on all cylinders every day.
‘Energy levels fluctuate, life gets in the way, and sometimes you genuinely need to leave early or have a quieter afternoon’.
But whether taking a ‘soft off day’ is a response to unfair work conditions or an expression of overall dissatisfaction, in the expert’s opinion, making them a regular habit ‘feels like a slippery slope’.
‘You do it once, get away with it, and gradually start pushing the boundaries further,’ she says.
‘Turning down tasks without explanation, scheduling fake meetings – it stops being self-care and starts becoming a risk to your professional reputation’.
Hannah continues: ‘Saying no to projects without any context can easily result in getting on the wrong side of your manager. This can breed a lack of trust, and ultimately lead to more micromanagement – probably what you were trying to avoid in the first place!’
Taking a pause from the hustle is important, but if you want to avoid potentially ruining your professional reputation, pick your moments.
Taking ‘soft off days’ on a weekly basis might not be worth the risk.
Hannah does emphasise that businesses should be mindful if they think they see this happening: ‘Ultimately, open and honest conversation between managers and their reports is the way forward. Not an accusation, but a check-in. How are you finding everything? How’s your workload? Try to have an honest conversation to make things work for both of you.
‘Remember that you have annual leave days for if you need some time out, and sick days for when it’s more than that’.
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