Survey: Most workers don't use all their time off

Looking for an inexpensive way to build goodwill among your employees?

Increase their paid days off. Seventy percent of them probably won’t use the extra vacation time, anyway.

So a survey suggests in a study that hints at the nature of toil, play and workplace guilt in America.

The survey was done by TSheets, an online time-tracking system. Last year 70 percent of U.S. workers didn’t take all the paid time off (PTO) they were due, it revealed, leaving millions of potential visits to the beach or the ballpark unused.

“Seventy percent was a real shocker to me,” says Patrick Adcock, an analyst at TSheets. “Then when you do the math to add up how many hours that was: 600 million days is what we’re looking at here. That’s just a massive number.”

Though only 16 percent of respondents said they received no PTO at all last year, even workers with vacation days don’t seem to be heading for the Rockies and shutting off their smartphones for weeks.

10 or more unused days

Typically, employers give 11–15 days per year, and 26 percent of the respondents had 10 or more unused days at year’s end, the survey reveals.

Why, for the love of Pete?

“The No. 1 answer for why people don’t take their PTO is that they’re too busy to,” Adcock says.

Others say they don’t feel comfortable taking time off. (Bosses, it’s time to back off.) Some employees simply forget until the end of the year, when it’s too late or there isn’t enough time to finish all the projects on their plates.

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The arrival of millennials in the workforce has brought a new cohort of workers who place a higher value on time off, the study suggests. Perhaps this is because they get less of it than their older co-workers—44 years and older—who have more earned vacation time, Adcock says.

They are also more likely to have young children around and, thus, likelier to be in favor of maternity and paternity leave, Adcock says. Only 11 percent of organizations offer paid maternity leave in addition to regular paid time off.

“It will be interesting to see if that changes companies’ work policies, if they do start to offer more programs and incentives like that,” he says.

Give them more?

Even if people aren’t burning up all that paid time off, 88 percent of respondents said their employers should provide PTO, and 63 percent would turn down a job offer if it did not include the benefit, TSheets reported.

Although most people are getting at least some paid time off, one-third of U.S. workers say they’d be happier if they had more PTO, the survey states.

This hints at a rather cunning possibility suggested by TSheets’ survey title: “Your Employees Don't Use Their PTO. Give Them More.”

“PTO can be very affordable for even small-business owners who are counting every cost,” Adcock says. “They can probably still really afford more PTO for their employees because ... their employees probably are not going to use all that time that they’re allowed.”

As for the blissful souls who do take their vacation days, the highest percentage—30 percent—patriotically vowed they would spend that time in the U.S. Twenty-eight percent responded that they’d spend time with family (the rest presumably spending time with other people’s families). Just 5 percent said they would travel abroad.

If you watch everyone around you jet off to fun places while you’re stuck at home, you’re not alone. One in four respondents said they would take a staycation.

Now come on, people. Summer’s lease hath all too short a date. Let’s burn some days off this year.

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