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Melissa Askew / Unsplash

Why Employees Should Get Three-Week Vacations

By Richard Huskisson Jul 24, 2022 | 3:31 PM

Burnout has been hitting workers hard in the last couple of years. Employers who want to keep employees on are learning lessons on how to avoid it.

 

International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) defines burnout as an occupational phenomenon, not a disease, and describes it as follows:

Burn-out is a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. It is characterized by three dimensions:

  • feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion;
  • increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job; and
  • reduced professional efficacy.

 

The last thing a good employer would want for their business is employees in burnout. And just burning through employees and hiring fresh people to replace them isn’t a great business strategy–eventually, you’ll run out of people willing to work for you.

 

The American Psychological Association found high levels of burnout in 2021 among US-based adult workers.

  • 79% of employees had experienced work-related stress in the month before the survey.
  • Nearly 3 in 5 employees reported negative impacts of work-related stress, including lack of interest, motivation, or energy (26%) and lack of effort at work (19%).
  • 36% reported cognitive weariness
  • 32% reported emotional exhaustion
  • 44% reported physical fatigue–a 38% increase since 2019.

 

The pandemic taking away most peoples ways to occupy their time other than work, taking their escapes, has left them too focused on work. This has brought in to sharp focus how broken our systems might be. More and more in North America we are looking at what is done in other countries who rank higher on happiness reports in both work and home life.

 

One thing they do differently is Vacation. First; they get a lot more, and second they don’t put limits on how much vacation can be taken together. In Canada an employee might typically get anywhere from 16 to 30 days off a year; depending on how many paid vacation days they have gained at their work. But in Denmark, Finland, France, and Spain they get 36 as a standard. In Iceland they have 38 days off a year between vacation time and holidays.

 

They also don’t put limits on people taking vacation time together. Typically in North America we’re not permitted or it’s strongly advised against taken more than two weeks vacation at a time. In Europe they might take an entire month off if they felt like it.

 

While an employee taking a significant vacation might be missed at their work, they will be missed a lot more if they are forced to seek employment elsewhere because they are too burned out to continue doing the job they have. It’s much more expensive to replace them too. A good reason to allow employees to not only have more vacation time, but to take it as they need it.

 

Source: https://tinyurl.com/vmj5vh6v

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