Why Do Americans Avoid Taking Time Off From Work?

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The United States of America is the only advanced economy that doesn’t legally require employers to provide a minimum number of vacation days to their employees. And even when paid time off is provided to us by our employer, we hesitate to use it. Why do we find it so difficult to take time off from work?

Discouragement, doubt and guilt

According to Karen Tan, Assistant Professor of Tourism and Hospitality Management at Middle Tennessee State University, who conducted a study on why Americans struggle to take time off from work, “We found that 1 in 5 respondents to our survey experienced vacation guilt, and these concerns made them think twice about following through with their vacation plans. For those who eventually did take a vacation, they often tried to ease their guilt by going for fewer days. They might also apologize for taking a vacation or avoid talking about their vacation plans at work.”

Reasons given for these feelings ranged from feeling discouraged from using their time off by their employer and fear of being seen as a slacker to worries that vacation will lead to poor performance reviews and feeling like they will be less respected for doing so.

Study answers some of the questions

“Annual usage of paid leave in America has been declining although employees are granted more time off than before,” Tan and her colleagues wrote in their study, which surveyed 860 full-time employees who received paid time off from their employers.

Respondents to the survey who said they experienced vacation guilt said they felt so much guilt about taking time off from work that they actually thought twice about following through with their vacation plans. That guilt also led to people who did use their vacation days to go for fewer days than allowed, apologize for taking a vacation, or to avoid talking about their vacation plans at work.

“Ironically, what’s supposed to be a source of relaxation and restoration morphs into a stressor: As vacations approach, feelings of doubt and guilt creep in,” Tan wrote in a recent article on the subject.

So how do we fix this?

“For paid time off to serve its purpose, I think employers need to provide more than vacation days,” Tan wrote. “They also need to have a supportive culture that readily encourages employees to use this benefit without having to worry about repercussions.”

In December of last year, the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), addressing the concern that nearly half of all employees said they expected to leave vacation time unused, wrote, “One approach leaders can take is to proactively encourage employees to take time off—or at least take time to decompress—and set an example by taking time away from work themselves.”

“Are there actual workplace cultural or business requirements impacting employee PTO? For example, are employees who don’t use vacation days the ones who are promoted more regularly than those who do not?” asked Sandra Moran, chief customer experience officer at software firm WorkForce Software.

The SHRM also suggested HR and company leaders better communicate time off policies, let employees know to take time off in advance, send reminders each quarter about using vacation time, and share data showing the correlation between employee time off trends and negative business outcomes, such as increased turnover, reduced productivity, or higher absenteeism.