Vacations are the stuff of novels, movies, and memories. Research on the benefits of encouraging employees to use vacation time shows they’re also a source of improved productivity and profit for businesses and better mental, physical, and financial health for employees. And all that is adrenaline for the economy.
The U.S. Travel Association says American workers failed to use 768 million vacation days in 2018, with 55 percent of workers queried saying they didn’t use all their time. That was a record. More than 80 percent of those workers also said it’s important to use vacation time to travel, but they didn’t do it, citing costs, air travel difficulties, and problems getting away from work.
Here are some relevant data points:
Aside from getting another Busch Gardens or Disney World sticker for the bumper of your car, what are the reasons to use that vacation time? According to TheJobNetwork.com and Business Insider, failure to use your paid downtime can lead to:
You can argue that vacations are costly, too, and that’s true if you travel or do some high-dollar partying. But not taking vacation time can be costly, too.
Bankrate.com says “Americans forfeited 212 million paid time off days (in 2017), equivalent to $62.2 billion in lost benefits. In essence, Bankrate says:
It’s not that Americans don’t get vacation time or paid holidays. The average person with less than five years on the job gets two weeks of paid vacation and eight paid holidays annually. It’s just, they say, that:
Many of those who do take vacation find themselves unable to disconnect, continually answering or making business phone calls or exchanging emails. Not a good idea, says Replicon.com, which cited those six scenarios.
Some employers think losing an employee to vacation time simply means paying two people to do one job – or leaving the work undone. That’s the short view. The long view is that what benefits employees also helps employers and thereby fuels the economy. Here’s more of the long view:
So, as established in detailing benefits accrued by employers and the economy when workers use their paid vacation time, the economy-employer-employee relationship is symbiotic. The entities interact for mutual benefit – in the best-case scenario.
All three have a dollar-driven bottom-line interest. The employee, though, has a physical stake in the game, too, and paid vacation protects that stake, preserving/enhancing physical and mental well-being.
Paid vacation, holidays, and sick leave are an investment in that employee’s well-being, and that investment is made because it benefits the company, too. And as former top General Electric executive Charles E. Wilson famously was misquoted as saying when being vetted by the Senate in 1953 to be President Dwight Eisenhower’s secretary of defense, “What’s good for General Electric is good for the country.”
Wilson was responding to a question in a Senate hearing about $2.5 million in G.E. stock he held. The issue was whether “he could make a decision adverse to the interests of General Motors” (and his stock). What he actually said was yes, he could. He added that he found that scenario inconceivable, “because for years I thought what was good for the country was good for General Motors and vice versa.”
Here’s the formula on calculating the benefits of taking a vacation: Well-rested and satisfied employee plus a company well-served by that employee equals a step toward creating or sustaining a strong U.S. economy.
Turn to us if you’re looking to enhance the employee-company partnership that makes your business thrive. The USF Office of Corporate Training and Professional Education offers:
For more information, check us out online, where you can find our contact information.