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“You can only roll over x% of your vacation days, so please use them before the end of the year.” How many of us have received this “use ‘em or lose ‘em” email? During any time I’ve worked as an insider – corporate or academic,” this message makes an annual appearance. I have probably lost enough vacation days to have quite a nice vacation!
I am not complaining. I recognize that this is a privileged position to be in. I am sure those working hard on jobs without benefits, would gladly change places. So what’s going on?
The obsolescence is not just applicable to the busy knowledge worker-type inside large organizations. But let’s start there. The fading model of vacation days assumes a regular Monday – Friday, 9-5 schedule. This assumption ignores the “death of the schedule” trend sweeping across society and the world of work. Basically, we are still treating the “normal” pace of activity involving working at night, weekends, and the dreaded across-time-zone conference calls as the exceptions, as if some day we will get back too normal. It ain’t happenin.’ The exception is becoming the rule.
As we get used to this piecemeal schedule, we learn to re-organize our work and life around it. We know when we need to be physically present at the office and when we don’t. We know what work needs to be done, by when, and figure out a schedule for how to make that work. If we need time off, we take it. Of course, this often means checking email, taking a call, or some other little bits of work during the vacation, or a whole lot of planning for an off-the-grid break. The bargain is that when work needs to get done, we do it, and if that means a 90-hour work week, so be it. It is really interesting to experience the cultural clashes in organizations where some parts of the workforce are on the 9-5 and others are not. “You didn’t take your vacation????”
The consulting project-based workforce (time in between jobs) has already experienced the obsolescence. They can have all the vacation they want when the assignment is over.
For those who are not being offered benefits, usually due to a pernicious approach that keeps hours works below a threshold in which the benefits kick in, it is a bad situation, but also reflects the obsolescence of the vacation days concept.
So, should firms still offer vacation days, knowing they won’t be used, or acknowledge the new reality and offer a more appropriate set of benefits? Whatcha think? — Andy Hines
“For those who are not being offered benefits, usually due to a pernicious approach that keeps hours works below a threshold in which the benefits kick in, it is a bad situation, but also reflects the obsolescence of the vacation days concept”
I see so much of this in the work lives of most of our young people. They have to pile in as room mates to keep from having to go back home and live because they can’t afford to live on their own on the piddling wages they are paid. Cheap service jobs give no days off, and if you have to take a day off for a sick child they make you feel guilty as heck or you could actually lose your job. To begin with, USA citizens were never given the days off that their peers got in Europe and the rest of the world–and still don’t. Human capital has rarely been valued in USA industry or business until the last two decades maybe. So I say, you bet have people be given leave time from their employers. At least 30 days paid vacation a year PLUS. We deserve it and we’re worth it. So I don’t think vacation days are necessarily obsolete, if for no other reason it builds in a fixed cost for an employer that’s calculated into to personnel costs