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More Than Half of US Workers Didn't Use Up Their Time Off Last Year (qz.com)
An anonymous reader shares an article: Americans, famously, take far less vacation time than their European counterparts: less than 17 days, on average, compared to 30 days in France, for example. But for many Americans, that's apparently all the time they need. More than half of all US employees (54%) didn't use all their days off last year, working a combined total of 662 million more days than required. Of those days, 206 million couldn't be rolled over or cashed out, meaning they were forfeited, costing the equivalent of $66 billion, according to a report (PDF) from Project: Time Off, a group funded by the travel industry. While it's a group with a strong interest in promoting more vacations, their findings are still revealing about America's unhealthy reluctance to take time off. Almost 60% of US workers who don't take their allotted vacation say they fear the amount of work they'll have to return to, according to the survey of 7,331 working Americans. Others (47%) say they stay put because they believe no one else can do their job, or because they want to impress their bosses with their dedication (36%).
Word. I get a lot of time off, but when I try to use it my boss is always "oh, we don't have coverage (BS), or "you are using it too fast/often" (also BS). Of course it doesn't roll over or get paid out at the end of the year, either.
I work for a company that offers unlimited vacation. I use it, extensively and, as a leader, I encourage my entire team to use it extensively as well. Last year I took more than 8 weeks of vacation and I'm already expecting 7 this year.
From the article:
You know what impresses me? People who are refreshed and excited at work, not those who are so self-righteous to believe no one else can do their job (that's total and unadulterated bullshit) or who think I'd be impressed by slogging through half-awake at work.
And no, I don't agree with companies having a policy of letting you cash out on unused vacation. That's just an excuse to keep you at your job.
I once worked somewhere that went a step further than this... In addition to letting you cash out anything over X hours of accrued vacation time (or roll it over, if you really wanted), they included all the normal "company holidays" in the flexible vacation time balance. So while you did technically get X company holidays a year, plus a reasonable allotment of actual vacation time, it all came out of the same pot. That meant that you actually had to use your vacation time to take those holidays off.
In theory, this was great. You got more vacation time, and could use it however you saw fit to do so. No need to be limited by specific pre-scheduled holidays.
In reality, this was extremely annoying. It basically meant that you were discouraged from ever taking any of those normal holidays off, so you didn't ever get a long weekend break. (this all was extra annoying as a junior person who didn't accrue vacation at as high a rate as everyone else, and who didn't have a family to take actual scheduled vacations with.)
Time you don't take off before you quit has to be paid out. Now, to make sure that your company CAN actually pay the time they "owe" you if you quit today and they go bankrupt the same day, your company has to stash money in government bonds to the tune of what they'd have to pay their workers if all of them went out the door today.
Calculate about, say, 25 vacation days per worker, for a workforce of, say 10,000. Let's be conservative and say that a day/person is about 100 bucks.
Can you see how companies can have a HUGE interest in their workers actually going on vacation, and doing it as early as possible?
I MUST spend my vacation every year. They now even made it a bonus-valued goal, not to spend my vacation days and letting them roll over threatens my annual bonus. And since March I get weekly reminders from HR that I still have 10 unplanned days and that beautiful days are coming up, and whether I don't feel like taking some of the upcoming Fridays (with Thu being a holiday) off to enjoy a 4 days weekend.
I kid you not.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Sure, here's one from last summer: https://hbr.org/2016/07/the-da...
It has plenty of links to other studies and important data points like this particular one which counters the premise of most of the comments I've seen thus far:
In most EU countries the employer will be in trouble if they fail to let you take all your holiday. In fact they need to push you to use it all up, because if there is any significant amount (>1 day) left over it can open them up to legal problems.
And of course, EU citizens have a much higher minimum - in the UK it's 28 days, of which your employer can require you to take 8 on public holiday days like New Year's Day, but that still gives you 4 weeks a year. Currently if you do regular overtime that increases your holiday entitlement too.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I completely agree that people need to use their vacation, however for some people they would rather have the money.
From a corporate responsibility perspective, it is stupid to not force people to take two week contiguous vacations every year, fully disconnected from work. You basically need it for detecting fraud and lack of process redundancy. The challenge is how a company handles the vacancy-- OT on other people, temps, or something else... all of which are ineffective.
Accrued PTO is a liability in the same sense that an unpaid bill is a liability. Eventually it will have to be paid (depending on the local laws). Also, if you think about it, it's a liability that the carries interest. When an employee gets a raise, all of their accrued vacation time gets a raise as well.
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