As I sit in the tree, my favorite tunes blasting through my headphones, I realize that I am experiencing something that is increasingly unfamiliar in today’s workplace: vacation time. Vacation time is a prescription that most overworked and stressed Americans desperately need. According to Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED), in 2011, Americans worked 1,703.55 hours per year, while the French only worked 1,475.79 hours per year, and Germans worked even fewer hours, averaging 1,406.25 hours per year. In 2014, VOX reported that the average American workweek was 41 hours, while 32 percent of the American population had a workweek of 45 or more hours. As a result, Americans tend to get sick more often; are more stressed; are worse at thinking, planning, decision making, learning and remembering; and are more disengaged than their far more relaxed peers from Europe who work less.
Americans also lose out when it comes to vacation time. According to the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in 2013, almost one in four Americans did not receive any paid vacation or paid holidays. The same report concluded that “the sum of the average paid vacation and paid holidays provided to workers in the private sector ― 16 days in total ― would not meet even the minimum required by law in 19 other rich countries.” The gap widens even more when legal holidays are included. America, unlike other rich countries, does not guarantee any paid holidays, whereas most other countries provide 5-13 per year. This lack of vacation time leads to high rates of stress, since we are constantly having to deal with responsibilities related to work, which leads to high burnout rates. A new report released by the Staples Advantage Index states that 53 percent of workers say that they are overworked and burnt out. The rise of technology has encouraged this trend, enabling employers to contact their employees at all hours of the day, creating an always-on work culture that is prevalent today. As a result, employees feel like they cannot escape work.
Vacations help workers escape work as well as increasing productivity through increases in intellect, resolving family issues and relieving stress. While on vacation, friends and family also develop closer bonds. This allows workers to have a better support network and resolve any issues that bogged them down while they were at work. Vacations also allow us to relieve stress since we are no longer in the high pressure work environment. Lower stress rates allow workers to be more engaged in their workforce and have lower rates of absenteeism. Vacation has also been proved to help reduce burnout.
Part of the reason that workers take so little time off is the workaholic culture that has developed in the U.S. This culture is caused by increased connectivity as employers are able to reach workers through email and texts, as well as managers’ or workers’ fear of missing important meetings and falling too far behind due to the absence of members of their teams. Americans also have a very materialistic view of life since we live in a capitalist consumer-based society. For our culture, happiness means having lots of money and products. America needs to reassess whether the stress levels, bad relations and health issues we endure in the name of materialistic pursuits are truly worth it. An important first step is taking time off, stepping back and assessing if the sacrifices individuals make are really justified by the rewards that they get. Companies and managers should be invested in changing this culture because they are actually being hurt by workers’ inability to take time off. According to Fortune Magazine, workers not taking time off costs U.S. businesses 224 billion dollars. By offering incentives for workers to take time off, companies and managers will actually be boosting their bottom lines instead of hurting them. In the end, it is in the best interest of both the business and the employee for workers to take more time off.