Won’t you please take a vacation?
Chances are you know someone in your workplace who refuses to take a vacation. Or maybe it’s you. Research shows that one out of seven workers entitled to paid vacation time didn’t use it this past year.
Some managers prefer when their employees don’t take a vacation.
“Somewhere around 13 percent of U.S. managers are more likely to promote people who don’t take all of their vacation days,” says Nancy Koehn, historian at the Harvard Business School.
Other companies want to fix this problem – so, they’re paying for their employees’ vacation expenses. In 2012, the company FullContact began offering their employees about $7,000 a year for a vacation.
“The perception of managers and workers is that somehow people who never take any vacation, or are always doing their job, are somehow better team members and are more productive,” says Koehn. “But the evidence on all of that is unambiguous. People who take time off are actually less stressed, more focused and more productive.”
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