I recently wrote a post about the use of time, and as I am headed for a two-week vacation to the west coast (Seattle & Vancouver), I thought I would write a post about vacation time. This topic has always intrigued me, as people often tend to complain about a lack of personal time, and a need to find time to escape from the stresses of the rat race. Throw in the piddly amount of vacation time given to North American employers, and it becomes even more baffling that the average American and Canadian worker fails to use up all their allotted vacation days. Huh?
This anomaly has existed for many years. According to the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation & Development), recent stats show that Americans put in 15% more hours than their European Union counterparts, with Koreans putting in the most hours. At the same time,the average amount of vacation time for North Americans is two weeks while in Europe it is around four weeks.
And yet, according to Expedia's 2008 International Vacation Deprivation Survey, 31% of Americans do not take advantage of their full vacation allocation, leaving an average of 3 unused vacation days, compared to only 1 in Canada. This translates to employees giving away $65 billion of earned money back to their employers.
To me unused vacation is like throwing away money. Anyone trying to maximize their dollars would make sure they take their full allotment of vacation days, if not for monetary purposes, at least for their own health, sanity and overall well-being. By the way, according to the Expedia survey, the average French worker gets 37 days vacation.
No comments:
Post a Comment