Washington - US
companies may be touting "unlimited vacation" policies and expanding
paid leave benefits to attract younger workers. But just before the long
weekend kickoff to summer, two new surveys show that plenty of US workers still
don't feel they can use all that time they're offered - as well as an
unsettling gender divide between how young women and young men take advantage
of the time off they've earned.
First the good
news: According to a survey of 7 331 Americans by Project: Time Off, an
initiative of the US Travel Association, people are reporting that they're
taking a little more time away. The survey, released Tuesday, showed that
vacation use rose to an average of 16.8 days per worker, up from 16.2 days the
year before, and that for the second year in a row, vacation use had climbed
slightly since it began tumbling around the year 2000.
Yet there's
still plenty of time left on the table, as that survey and one released
Wednesday by the jobs site Glassdoor reveal. Project: Time Off says the 16.8
days that workers use on average is still far less than the 20.3-day long-term
average between 1976 and 2000 - and, of course, well under the 22.6 days they
say they receive. Meanwhile Glassdoor's survey of 2 224 US adults found that US
workers on average have taken just 54 percent of their allotted time.
"Americans
are really bad about taking their hard-earned vacation or paid time off,"
said Scott Dobroski, Glassdoor's community expert. "I say it that way
because there is a monetary value here. It's part of people's total
compensation package."
The report by
Project: Time Off - which uses an outside firm to conduct the survey but is
funded primarily by the US Travel Association, which would, of course, like to
see people spend more on vacations - also shows that some workers are more
likely to take time off than others, revealing divides along both gender and
job titles.
Although there
was a jump in young men's willingness to take time off - with 51 percent saying
they'd used all their vacation days, compared with 44 percent last year - fewer
millennial women said they were using all of the time away they'd earned.
(Forty-four percent, down from 46 percent last year, said they'd taken full
advantage of their benefit.)
Feeling guilty
In explaining
why they weren't using all their time, young women were also more likely to say
they felt guilty, replaceable or wanted to "show complete
dedication." On every measure, whether it was the fear of returning to too
much work or worrying that no one else can do their jobs, more young women were
concerned about the effect of vacation than young men.
"Millennial
women tend to have more pronounced guilt and feel they don't want to burden
people with their time away," said Katie Denis, the lead researcher for
Project: Time Off. "They're more likely to identify with that 'work
martyr' brand of thinking." Indeed, although the data showed a similar
gender divide in other age groups, Denis said, it was most pronounced among
millennial women, 46 percent of whom said it was a good thing for their boss to
see them as a work martyr, compared with 43 percent of millennial men and 38
percent of overall respondents.
The survey also
found a divide among job title. Senior executives may say they hear more at
work about taking vacation and believe their company culture supports it, but
they're also less likely to actually use it. Sixty-one percent said they left
some vacation time unused, compared with 52 percent of people who are not
managers.
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Why the number
ticked up this year is not entirely clear. Denis said part of it could be
because workers are receiving more time off in the first place. The average
amount of time away workers earned in 2016 increased 0.7 days to 22.6 vacation
days. Or it's possible that companies are recognizing the benefits of rested
workers and encouraging them to take more - or that employees are feeling more
confident in their job security and less nervous about taking time off.
The trend of
Americans using less of the vacation time they've earned coincides with the
rise in "paid time off banks," in which companies put vacation days,
sick time and personal days into one bucket, rather than a more traditional
approach of offering separate benefits. In 2002, according to a survey by the
human resources association World at Work, 28 percent of companies offered time
off this way, but that had grown to 43 percent by 2016. Employees concerned
about needing to reserve time for a potential illness or a sick child might be
more apt to leave time off unused when the year's end comes.
Although Denis
says that may partially explain why Americans continue to not use all their
vacation benefit, she said the ability to work anywhere is an equally, if not
more, blame-worthy culprit. The report showed that vacation forfeiters said
their biggest reason for doing so was because of their fears about returning to
a mountain of work.
As she puts it:
"When you can see it stacking up in real time, that can be very
discouraging." Which may help explain why, according to Glassdoor, some 66
percent of Americans say they spend time working when they are on vacation, up
from 61 percent three years ago.