Everyone loves a good vacation, whether it be it a week at home without having to think about work for any period of time or a grand trip to another part of the world. Many full-time positions offer their employees a certain number of days each year that they can take a vacation and get paid just as if they were in their office working! Their logic is that a well rested and stress free employee will be much more productive, but for us, it’s paid vacation time, and who doesn’t want that? Well, apparently some people don’t.
The Wall Street Journal recently did a study into vacation time, and they found some rather interesting facts about American’s vacation time usage. The study found that most Americans considered a long vacation to be just a mere two weeks long. To most Americans, this might seem like quite a significant amount of vacation time, but it’s nothing compared to what Europeans get. While most Americans might get two weeks annually of vacation, many Europeans get 8 weeks of vacation a year. Imagine if you could get two months off of work each year!
The survey conducted by the Wall Street Journal also found that many Americans don’t even make use of all of their vacation time. They found that one in three Americans forfeit some of their vacation days! There are a couple of reasons people don’t take all of their vacation time. Some people think that the company simply could not survive without them and that they can’t take the risk of taking a vacation. Meanwhile others believe that the company will realize that the company will go on just fine without them while they are on vacation and decided that they are not needed after their vacation is over.
Recently an executive sent an internal email to Yahoo employees urging them to take all of their vacation time. They even considered making vacation mandatory until several employees became outraged by the situation! The company then decided to make it a voluntary effort!
Other Americans are now taking what are called “working vacations.” The idea that they’ll take a laptop or a Black Berry device and do some work while they are on their trip. Why would anyone take time off of work, just to go somewhere else and work?
If you have vacation time, make the fullest use of it you can. Take a vacation to another part of the country. If you can’t afford traveling, go visit some relatives for a week, or just take a week off, relax at home, and don’t think about work during that time period. Your job will resume as normal when you get back, it’s okay to take a break every now and then.