According to the results of a new survey, 31 percent of employees won’t use all of their vacation days this year, and the average U.S. adult will leave about three vacation days on the table.
The survey, conducted by online travel agency Expedia, found that work stress is driving the trend toward foregoing all available vacation. In particular, 18 percent of respondents—employed workers in the U.S, Canada, Great Britain, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, and Austria—reported that they’ve cancelled or postponed vacation plans because of work, and 29 percent admitted they have trouble coping with stress from work at some point in the vacation cycle. What’s more, 24 percent said that they check work email or voice mail while vacationing, up from 16 percent in 2005.
Experienced HR professionals know that vacation is an important tool to help recharge employees. So while it might appear that your employees are at peak productivity during the year because they’re working more days and not taking all the vacation to which they’re entitled (and maybe even working during their vacations), the opposite may well be true. Your workforce could in fact be lagging and tired.
And there’s another risk for employers whose employees aren’t taking all their vacation days: In California, vested vacation time stacks up—and it all has to be paid out as wages upon termination of the employment relationship. So if a hard-driving employee has foregone a few vacation days a year, you could be facing a big payout if the worker quits or is discharged.
400+ pages of state-specific, easy-read reference materials at your fingertips—fully updated! Check out the Guide to Employment Law for California Employers and get up to speed on everything you need to know.
5 Vacation Strategies
As your workforce is getting geared up for the summer vacation season, here are five ways to limit and manage your vacation liability, and ensure employees get the rest and relaxation they need:
- Impose a cap. Even though “use it or lose it” vacation policies are illegal in California, you can limit vacation accrual with a policy that caps the number of vacation days an employee can accrue. You can stipulate that once an employee’s accrued vacation reaches that amount, no additional time will be earned until the accrued vacation falls below the cap. Access California Employer Advisor’s sample vacation policy.
- Cash out regularly. Pay out accrued and unused vacation, either annually or on some other periodic basis.
- Require time off. Not only is this a good policy to boost employee morale and productivity but it can also help keep the vacation books clean.
- Make it easy. If employees are overloaded at work, chances are they feel that they just can’t get away for that week with family. You can ease that problem by establishing vacation coverage guidelines, such as figuring out the number of staff needed for support at different times of the year, ensuring employees are cross-trained, and communicating coverage expectations to managers and staff. Managers should also be encouraged to work one-on-one with employees to plan for coverage of important work that might need to be done during an employee’s absence.
- Tell employees to leave it behind. Finally, let employees know that vacation means that they shouldn’t be checking voice mail, email, etc. Of course, sometimes a work emergency arises that needs the employee’s immediate attention—but this should be the rare exception rather than the rule.