Center for Workplace Happiness

One twelfth of the year is over. Done. Finished. How much of your comp time, PTO, and vacation time did you take this month? Have you thought about how you’ll use your vacation time this year? And have you calendared it and maybe even planned it down to the itinerary and ticketing?

America is a young country. If you’ve ever been to Europe or Asia, you’ll understand just how young America is. The continent isn’t young and there have been civilizations and people here far longer than there has been an American form of government here – I’m talking about the government and customs. America is young and was founded largely on the Puritan ethos of education for all, hard work, and sacrifice. While the Puritans era in the US ended by 1740, the ethos still drives many people today.

And too often, what ends up being sacrificed by most – yes, MOST – Americans is their paid time off.

Why is it bad to be all work, no play? Let me count the...

There were a few major shifts during and after the pandemic in how we work, and one of them is people realizing that their lives are at least as important as their careers. People looked for jobs that paid more, gave them more satisfaction, more opportunity for advancement, the opportunity to move to a part of the country they preferred, and that gave them more PTO. Vacations are so important that post-pandemic consumer behavior has shifted from buying things to buying experiences, and the appetite for travel became so voracious that for a time it was called “revenge travel.” Reading that, you might think that people are finally getting serious about taking all the vacation time available to them.

You’d be wrong.

Companies, in an effort to attract job-changing talent, offered more PTO last year. And 55% of that PTO went unused, mostly by female employees. What’s up with that?

According to an article in Forbes, 72% of American workers say their job stresses...

Whether there are kids in your home or not, you’re probably thinking about doing something this summer. Because of the rhythm of years in childhood, most of us associate the summer months with vacation time. What are your vacation plans?

Don’t have any? You’re in good company – nearly a third of Americans don’t have travel plans either. Inflation is pricing some of them out of travel, some don’t have anyone to go with them and don’t want to go it alone, and some of them are the same people who lose it every year.

Do you use it or do you lose it? Vacation time, I mean. On average, Americans give back nearly 10 vacation days a year to their employers. I won’t ask a nosy question like how much do you make per year – I’ll just ask you to do the math. Take your daily rate, multiply it by the number of vacation days you didn’t use last year, and think about whether you’d just give that much money away. Because you...

It’s the last day of the first month of the new year. And it’s cold. OK, it’s winter and it’s supposed to be cold. Seriously, Mother Nature – 18 in Maine, 4 in North Dakota and minus 1 in Minnesota? The freezing temperatures are coast to coast, north to south, and make me want to hibernate. You, too? Then today is the perfect day to cuddle up to your computer and plan a vacation!

On this National Plan for Vacation Day, let’s look at how a perk at work gets treated like a jerk. Over half of Americans don’t take all their paid time off from work. They have the benefit of vacation and personal days, in addition to sick days, and yet they don’t take full advantage of the benefit.

That, in spite of the fact that in the most recent comprehensive study of vacation time as a benefit, 63% of workers said a generous paid time off package was a deciding factor in whether or not they would accept a job offer. Clearly we want to be offered vacation...

Do you take all the days off that you’re entitled to? This is something I don’t understand about humans at all – most of you don’t take all your vacation days!! Yes, what you do is very important work. Yes, you love what you do and it’s a calling and most of the time it feeds your soul.

You know what else feeds your soul? Having a balanced life, and one of the best ways to do that is to take all the time off you’re entitled to. And do something fun or nothing at all – it doesn’t matter. Just take your days off because you earned them and you need them.

I’m Kacey and I love veterinarians!

When was the last time you took a vacation? When is the next time? Mom takes me to dog shows all the time so we get mini-vacations and those are fun. Think about your next vacation – where will you go, who will go with you, what will you do? Have fun planning the details and thinking about what you’ll do and see and experience. Because here’s the secret to vacations – they’re fun from the moment you start planning them until long after they’re over when you remember to enjoy them inside your brain before, during and after.

I’m Kacey and I love veterinarians!