The holiday month is getting its comeuppance

There was a time when January ruled as the dominant month for the taking of holidays.

There was a time when January ruled as the dominant month for the taking of holidays.

Factories closed. The weather was warm. Dad's annual leave could be maxed-out by stacking days in and around public holidays in the Christmas-New Year break.

All this of course led to January being considered somehow different to other months of the year. January is the holiday month. January is the hot month. January is the favourite month. Well it's time for January to get the comeuppance it deserves.

We at the People's Movement for the Ordinarification of January began our campaign 40 years ago. Our first strategy was to encourage women to return to or remain in the workplace. All of a sudden, average families had to co-ordinate the diaries and leave entitlements of two breadwinners. Straight away there was a difference. Out went the single four-week holiday; in came a series of short breaks. Beautiful. Comrade March and Comrade April were ecstatic: they were getting extended vacation action crystallising around Easter.

But the main break was still being taken in fancy-pants January. We had to come up with another cunning plan.

Then it hit us. We would change the economic base of the country. We organised for Australia's manufacturing process to be outsourced to China; now factory workplaces don't close over Christmas because there are no factories. How good is that?

The reason why factories closed over Christmas was because the operating costs of capital equipment (say assembly lines) only worked efficiently when a plant was at full strength.

Yet further advances were being made on the January behemoth. We could see January starting to wobble as Australia's preferred holiday month but it simply refused to keel over.

We needed a killer blow, a stake driven right between January's New Year's day and Australia Day.

And then it came from most unlikely of sources: technology. If you can't extract the holiday spirit entirely out of January then we may be able to inject work connections into holidays. How clever is that?

The technology of which I speak is a delightfully insidious device known as the BlackBerry. I am aware that there other equally effective communications tools but the entire genre is best encapsulated by this singular brand name. About five years ago, senior management became addicted to the BlackBerry. It all started so innocently. The odd CEO would take their BlackBerry home of a weekend to "check their emails". They wouldn't do anything; they just liked to watch emails coming and going. I can't quite see the excitement myself but to addicts I understand that it's a real turn-on.

Occasionally, when their partner was out of the room or wasn't looking they'd shoot back an answer to an especially tantalising email query. A simple "yes" or "no" or, more daringly, "call Monday".

But very quickly the BlackBerry started to round on January. It was one thing for this device to infiltrate the weekend. But it was quite another to mount a full-scale assault on the annual holiday.

At first January didn't suspect a thing. After all, surely the BlackBerry was like a glorified mobile phone and hadn't they been part of Australia's beach culture for almost a decade?

But whereas workers in the workplace may not feel comfortable placing a call they will without a moment's hesitation shoot off an email. It's not like the recipient has to respond. They can, if they so desire, just watch.

But here's the truly insidious thing about taking a BlackBerry on a summer holiday in January. The knowledge that someone is contacting you for your advice when you are out of the office is, when all is said and done, intoxicating. It's a full-on power kick. "I have to check my emails to see that everything is OK because I am indispensable to the operation of the enterprise for which I work." It's as simple as that.

Take your BlackBerry to the beach. Check your emails daily. Nay, hourly! Don't ever disconnect from the office. Help drive a stake right through the heart of that uppity January so that it will never again rise above other months and present itself as special. And really, isn't that what the People's Glorious Movement for the Ordinarification of January is all about?

Bernard Salt is a KPMG partner