The Pew Research Center's data (via Bloomberg) shows that only 48% of workers in the United States say they use up all their allocated vacation days. It might seem strange that someone would refuse to take paid time off that they're owed, but many say they worry about falling behind at work or feel bad about leaving an excessive workload with co-workers. Then there are those who feel they simply don't need the time off – people who really love their jobs, presumably.
Another reason is the all-too-familiar fear (and occasionally a justified one) that using up all of one's vacation time could mean losing out on a promotion. Many also believe that if a company is making layoffs, which has become a familiar sight in the tech world these days, bosses are more likely to retain staff who take fewer vacation days.
[...] Ironically, working from home has also led to people taking fewer vacation days. Common reasons why employees used to take days off work, such as visiting a doctor, can now be done remotely or by leaving the home office for a short while.
"US employees have been conditioned to believe if you aren't at work, you are lazy or at risk of being replaced," said Christy Pruitt-Haynes, global head of talent and performance at workplace consultant firm NeuroLeadership Institute. "We also have been taught that to get more you have to work more, and since we all want more, we tend to prioritize active work over other things in our life."
The problem is less severe in Europe, where workers usually get more than the 15 - 20 average paid days off that US employees receive - and feel less guilty about using them.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Thursday April 06, @03:06AM (6 children)
My company's solution to this is to eliminated PTO and replace it with "Discretionary time off". We're getting a payout for our accrued PTO balances, and in the future we're allowed to take an unlimited amount of time off as long as we meet our business objectives.
For me, personally, I needed that nagging "Use this or lose it" line on my paystub to remind me to take time off. Without that, I'll probably work more. I fear that is not to my or my employer's benefit. We'll see how it works out.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06, @03:39AM (1 child)
Yeah this is a pretty well known trick by employers as it avoids them having to do payouts for earned but unused PTO and overall reduces PTO use (most people worry about how much "unlimited" is too much so end up using less than their prior allocation).
This whole 'afraid to take a break' mentality needs to die in my opinion. It is bad for employees and employers since burned out employees are less productive and more likely to make mistakes. Unfortunately US employers are still of the mentality of "work 'em to death and replace 'em" - something that's starting to change since Covid started and has them scared to death when they tell workers to come into the office and they say no (hence all the manufactured layoffs by very large very profitable companies trying to get the proles back in the office).
Sources:
Unlimited = Less: https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/benefits/pages/4-lessons-about-unlimited-vacation.aspx [shrm.org]
US Burnout effect on Productivity: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/25/vacation-can-make-you-more-productive--just-ask-the-europeans.html [cnbc.com]
Manufactured layoffs after attempting to force workers back:
Amazon Back to Office: https://www.geekwire.com/2023/amazon-changes-back-to-office-policy-tells-corporate-workers-to-come-in-3-days-a-week/ [geekwire.com]
Google back to office: https://www.curbed.com/2022/06/hybrid-3-day-return-office-apple-google-remote-work.html [curbed.com]
Facebook back to office: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/metas-zuckerberg-encourages-employees-to-get-back-to-the-office/ [seattletimes.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ElizabethGreene on Thursday April 06, @02:27PM
I can't complain about the "payouts for earned but unused PTO" bit. I carried over 4 weeks from 2022 to 2023, and I'm about to get an extra month's pay for that. I understand what you mean though; it is an accounting liability.
To be clear, I'm not afraid to take a break. I'm a person that enjoys working and will forget to take time away. It's a bug.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday April 06, @11:56AM (2 children)
I'm going on the assumption that my (large) company's policies of notification of performance issues prior to termination actually mean something, and nobody has said anything yet... and many co-workers are clearly less productive...
An annual two week break plus time off as needed seems more than reasonable under a "discretionary" policy. But, it all depends on your chain of command and their objectives. Sometimes it's not about your performance, but some other metric that some three levels up boss is pushing...
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Thursday April 06, @01:01PM (1 child)
I think I"m up to 2 weeks off each year, but good luck actually getting to use it. But, at least I do get a payout at the end of the year for whatever portion I didn't use.
One of the main reasons that companies like use it or lose it policies or ones where it gets paid out on a given date is that they have to set aside funds to cover the vacations, or risk misleading financials and issues related to not having the funds to cover the expense.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday April 06, @04:55PM
At a small company I worked for, the president - employee of 15 years who never took PTO, but accrued it all - had a stroke, forced retirement, and he cashed out the 30 weeks of banked PTO on his way out. Now, we wish him a happy recovery in retirement and don't begrudge him his earnings, but 30 weeks of pay for someone who just up and quits one day is a pretty big liability in a small company. It also has the interesting math of: accrue your PTO when you're at lower pay rates, but cash it in at your highest rate of pay.
Where I am now, they do "Use it or lose it" which leads to people taking off every Friday for months leading up to the cutoff and similar things. In the old days, you used to accrue additional weeks of vacation with experience time, but here it's two weeks plus holidays (11 days, I think) and then one extra week every 5 years - not building: 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4.... but one off-ish: 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2... If I had a better deal, I'd take it.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by cmdrklarg on Thursday April 06, @02:09PM
Man, if I had unlimited time off I'd be using it!
Answer now is don't give in; aim for a new tomorrow.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06, @03:39AM (8 children)
I own & manage a tiny engineering company. It's easy to say, "Oh, you get to pick your work hours." But the reality is that I'm on (at least to some extent) all the time. I think I'm pretty lucky, since I enjoy the work and have good customers to work with.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by janrinok on Thursday April 06, @03:46AM (6 children)
So if you have a serious illness or an accident that means you CANNOT work for a period of time - does your company go bust?
This is should only be the case, IMO, for one-man-band operations. If no-one else in the business can handle the management aspects even for a short amount of time then the company is not set up to survive. That should be near the top of the list of problems that you need to resolve. Your good customers will go somewhere else if you are ill.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06, @04:13AM (2 children)
> ...... does your company go bust?
It doesn't go bust immediately because the 40+ year old company has good cash reserves, enough to meet payroll for a year or so. There are others that can fill in to some extent and keep things going.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by janrinok on Thursday April 06, @04:39AM (1 child)
I'm pleased to hear it! Well done.
However, it also means you can take a vacation..... and let your staff take theirs too. The world won't end. You will be better for it and it gives your small staff some time to experience roles that they do not get to practise very often. Put your trust in your best employees.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06, @03:00PM
I used to take a few vacations. Then there was about 10 years when I had to stay in town anyway to take care of my aging parents, both needed a lot of attention, so vacations (and most work travel) were very limited. After the second parent died I was getting ready to start traveling again and then Covid hit--bad timing for that plan! Often the vacations were interrupted with some work related problem anyway...more or less defeating the idea of "disconnecting" from work.
I'm fairly happy with my current situation, which is to be loosely "on call" (mostly via email, some telephone) for my few customers and employees. And, not working full time in between--I do a lot of reading and other activities while keeping an eye on the business. Note that I'm a few years past the "normal" retirement age, but since I'm enjoying the technical challenges we take on, I have no intent of retiring any time soon. One crucial piece of this is the excellent internal working relationship we have--unlike most companies I've visited, we minimize internal politics, almost no squabbling to deal with.
The disaster/succession plan is simple, one of my "guys" has been with me for a long time, he gets the business IP if he wants to continue to use the name and good reputation, and my family gets the assets. No kids to take over the business.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday April 06, @11:59AM (2 children)
I intentionally don't do certain things for my colleagues, in the name of cross-training.
If they can learn to do something in five minutes, and do it in two after that, there's no reason for them communicating the problem to me for me to do it in one minute for them when I get around to it.
Most of this cross-training involves showing the co-workers how to find the documentation, wherever it may be.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 06, @10:10PM (1 child)
Similar thing over here. I'm in charge of my summer office (a staff of up to six people) and typically there are several new people every year due to the nature of seasonal work - sometimes brand spanking new to both the business and the work. One year I was the only person in the office who had ever worked in my office before with only one other person who had done any sort of accounting/auditing work for the company before. If you don't train people to work independently from the start (as well as establishing good communication), you will go insane in such a situation. One can't do it all - that's why there is a staff of six people in the first place. It is helpful that much of the work is a daily routine so that once they get something down, it makes everything easier every day.
One of the things I found useful for doing that is to let people work by themselves without me helicoptering. How quickly I let them go depends on their skills and comfort level. But I find that they learn better when I'm not always around to give them a quick answer.
So my approach to such training is initially stepping out of the office for a few minutes while they work, leading up to the usual level of independence for their position (overnight would be on their own for almost the entire shift while some day time positions would see no more than 3 or 4 hours alone, and my assistant working independently over my weekends).
This is much simpler and stable a work environment than a small business, but I think the same principles apply. If you're always interacting even at the relatively light level discussed above, then they aren't truly independent and you won't know what problems will happen when you aren't around to help. My take is that even if one plans to work over their vacation, one should take it just so people have experience in dealing with problems when the boss isn't around.
In addition, since there is a successor, he probably should start having significant input into where the company is heading. As long as it's not too weird or an ugly Perry Mason scenario, it'll help prepare the business for the next generation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 07, @01:14AM
Similar here, but in a different setting--small company, tough engineering analysis problems.
When we have an intern (college engineering student or grad student) we give them a problem that we hope is just easy enough that they can succeed. After some one-on-one intro to the project, they mostly work at their own home. I make sure to tell them that we expect them to get stuck sometimes. The key is how long to stay stuck...being stuck for a bit is often good, forces some outside research or a careful check back to make sure a previous error isn't causing problems. Depending on the project and their background I usually suggest they give us a call or email if they are stuck for more than about an hour. Side note, I make sure to tell them that they will be paid for their time--stuck or productive--we know that being stuck and then getting unstuck is bound to happen.
(Score: 3, Informative) by looorg on Thursday April 06, @07:46AM
I heard that one to -- oh it must be so nice you can take off time whenever you want. At which point I told them that any time I take time off is a time I don't make any money. So while they might get paid vacation, and I get paid vacation from my main job but if I didn't have that one, I don't have any paid vacation and any time you are not working is on your dime and dollar.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Snotnose on Thursday April 06, @04:35AM (1 child)
I kept a week or so "in the bank" just in case. Other than that I used it all.
I remember when I was in my early 20s pissing next to the company president. I asked him why I couldn't take 1 week vacation pay in cash so I could go somewhere with the second week. He said he'd get back to me, and I never heard back. Now I know accounting wouldn't let him, but back then I was too broke to go anywhere.
I just passed a drug test. My dealer has some explaining to do.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by turgid on Thursday April 06, @07:00AM
Company accounting is indeed a mystery. Several times in my career I've worked for companies where a message has come round from on high telling us workers to take some vacation sooner rather than later because they didn't want it all on the books in the last quarter. Our reply was, "Well stop overloading us with work that is critical to the business. Spread it out a bit. You can't have it both ways." Everything's always super-duper mega critical to the business, we must achieve this or else, by the way too many of you are not taking your holidays and are working too many late evenings and weekends.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 4, Interesting) by turgid on Thursday April 06, @06:22AM (5 children)
Paid holidays were hard fought for and won in Victorian times. Worker health and productivity went up. Your paid holidays are part of your compensation package, and a legal right in civillised countries. Take them, otherwise you are cheating yourself. In civillised countries it is illegal to discriminate for promotion and redundancies on such things. I know in the UK our current deregulation happy government wants to roll back our legal rights and make us more like the USA. We must stand up and be counted.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 4, Informative) by deimtee on Thursday April 06, @09:27AM
In Australia vacation time accrues if you don't use it and companies have to show it as a liability on the books. (It is also payable on severance for any reason). Once you get to 5 weeks or so management will start hounding you to take it.
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday April 06, @12:02PM (3 children)
>In civillised countries it is illegal to discriminate for promotion and redundancies on such things.
Illegal is another word for "not allowed to write it down, or say it out loud." Want to fire somebody because you don't like them? Just find a legitimate reason. Most of the U.S. has adopted "Employment at Will" which means: no reason whatsoever is needed to terminate employment. Sure, it's illegal to fire based on race, or a hundred other "protected" factors, but when no reason is required to be given for termination - those laws have absolutely no teeth.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by turgid on Thursday April 06, @12:32PM (2 children)
Here in the UK you can put someone on a "performance improvement plan" which lasts three months and then fail them, so terminating their employment. That's how someone explained it to me a while ago. I think they can fire you for no reason for many months, maybe even a year, after you start. Various governments keep changing the period.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday April 06, @04:48PM (1 child)
I don't know what the period was in the U.S. before "Employment at Will" became a thing in the late 1990s.
With "Employment at Will" the notice period is basically zero. Better employers will still pay severance, sometimes a week of pay per year worked or something along those lines, but not because they are required to. They also pay accrued sick time, which first led to the "use it or lose it" rules on paid time off, and now is converting to the "well, take the PTO you need" wishy washy mess. I mean, it can work great, but...
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Friday April 07, @09:04AM
Captain Picard didn't give much notice before "Fire at Will" either
(Score: 2, Insightful) by dustbuster on Thursday April 06, @08:59AM (1 child)
Given that the amount of PTO provided in the US is minimal, it's pretty sad that people don't use it all. In fact, do people take holidays at all? I'm from a different country that legislates 20 days PTO a year, plus another 11 days in public holidays. Here companies insist people take all their PTO as it is otherwise a liability on their books. And it's definitely not career limiting to take all the leave.
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Thursday April 06, @04:16PM
It's often times not an option. I work in a department with two other people and nobody to cover. Taking a vacation is counter productive as I just get flooded with work when I get back. Getting 2 days off is frequently possible , but more than 3 is a nightmare.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Opportunist on Thursday April 06, @09:29AM (3 children)
Since companies here have to pay you for your time off if you quit (or get fired) and still have time off pending, it has become a law that they have to show they got enough money to pay you for the time off they owe you by stashing money, usually in bonds. Since that money is pretty much dead money and with a lot of employees, this can quickly amount to a couple millions for larger corporations, they pretty much badger you into taking your time off, preferably right at the start of the year, but they absolutely press you into using your annual amount before the year is over.
Works for me.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06, @12:00PM (2 children)
>. this can quickly amount to a couple millions for larger corporations,
Not sure, but I think these funds may be part of the reason for corporate hostile takeovers? The new owners (at least in some cases) can raid this fund, along with pension money. My example goes back to the 1980s, a friend worked for a company that was taken over and not only lost his engineering job (15 years employment), but the pension and vacation that he had "saved up" according to company accounting. (he also had saved some personally, so he wasn't left totally broke).
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Thursday April 06, @05:09PM (1 child)
(I am not an expert on this topic.) The tiny single-digit number of takeovers I've researched haven't been focused on looting assets but have gone after the future cashflows of the company instead.
They find a company with little debt, steady income, and reasonable profit numbers. They take on a bunch of debt to buy the company, transfer the debt to the company to buy itself, and cash out a pile of money in the process. Where the company used to have steady income to turn into profit, now they use that income to service the debt.
Do you have any examples of the other kind of takeover? I'd like to take one apart. Any resources on this topic generally would be welcome too. I haven't read a lot about the "dark side" of M&A. :)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06, @06:54PM
My example was Buffalo Forge, where employees lost all the money in the company-funded portion of their pension plan (and likely accrued vacation as well, but I'm not certain about that).
If you have NY Times archive access, try this to start?
https://www.nytimes.com/1981/03/07/business/buffalo-forge-bows-to-ampco-takeover.html [nytimes.com]
Here's a suit with a "white knight" that attempted to stave off Ampco (Ampco were known raiders),
https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/555/892/1457192/ [justia.com]
Buffalo Forge has a stellar history of innovation, including early work by Carrier, leading to modern air conditioning, https://www.howden.com/en-us/articles/refrigeration/the-history-of-buffalo-forge-infographic [howden.com] but the Ampco buyout was the end of their creative days. Once Ampco stripped the company assets the next owner bought at figurative fire sale price and limps along at a fraction of the original company.
Also lost was significant direct and indirect (supplier) income for the Buffalo area as well as possible spin offs and other related industrial activity. Just one of many pieces at that time that led to "rust belt" status for Buffalo until very recently.