Pros And Cons Of Paid Vacation Leave

President William Howard Taft, in 1910, proposed that every American worker needed to be provided with at least two to three months of vacation a year “in order to continue his work the next year with the energy and effectiveness that he ought to have” (Dishman). President Taft later went on to propose this bill, but unfortunately, his bill was rejected by the U.S. Legislators because they did not agree. Companies in the United States should be required to pay employee’s vacation leaves. In this essay, I will talk about what paid vacation leave is, the many positive and negative effects of paid vacation leaves, why we should require employers to pay employee’s vacation leaves, and how other countries are able to do it successfully. Many Americans in the United States are not provided with the opportunity of paid vacation leave, also known as paid time off (PTO), since there is not a federal law that requires employers to give employees paid time off. In “Here's How Many Paid Vacation Days the Typical American Worker Get,” Abigail Hess states that according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only “76 percent of private industry workers receive paid vacation days” the remaining amount relies on employers to decide if employees time off is paid. The way employees acquire paid vacation leave is through the number of years he or she has served their company/organization. Paid vacation leave is “days for which an employee is paid when he or she takes time off from work” (Heartfield). 

During this time, employees are encouraged to relax, recover from sickness or simply clear their mind off of work and do things they are usually not able to when they are at work. When employers offer their workers paid time off to clear their heads, the number of errors that happen in the workplace can decrease. For example, most banks do require their employees to take paid time off to prevent employees from committing bank fraud. Although paid time leave is not necessarily required for companies and employers in the United States to give, there are plenty of companies that do. In an article, “25 Highest Rated Companies for Vacation & Time Off,” written by the Glassdoor Team, ranks companies by the number of vacation leave days they give. In the article, a company that goes by the name of Amgen Inc., which is a biopharmaceutical company located in A Thousand Oaks, California, ranks as the “top number one company for vacation leave”. 

The reason for coming in first is that upon being hired, its employees are given five weeks of paid time off. Giving employees paid vacation leave can be both benefiting and harmful to a company. Employees that are given paid vacation leave, can use their time to clear their minds from all the stress they experience in their work environment so when they return to work, their minds are refreshed. Time off also serves as an incentive to want to work harder and do a better job at work. Allowing employees to have paid time off decreases the chances of employees wanting to resign, especially when they are in higher more important work positions. Most of the time, burnout will play an important role as to why an employee wants to resign. Burnout is when a person experiences large amounts of stress and often times feels overwhelmed with a constant desire to meet demands, in this case, work demands. Expecting moms and dads would also get to utilize their paid vacation leave after the birth of their child. Paid vacation leave would give parents the chance to bond with their newborn child for a couple of months, give the mother’s time to recover, and dads time to relax. Higher positioned workers resigning due to burnout, and a non stop stressful work environment affects a company’s productivity in the long run. Since the company will have fewer employees, less work will be done. 

In “How Your Time-Off Policy Can Cut Costs and Improve Productivity,” Sharon Florentine claims that in a study conducted by “Kronos shows that the number one cause of workplace stress is inadequate staffing” because the fewer employees there are, the less work is getting done (Florentine qtd. Kronos). When companies give employees paid time off, companies can benefit from taking a take a step back and seeing how good or bad their employee is at their job. Giving employees paid time off, allows time for employers to analyze an employee’s work performance. If the employee is missed, then it signifies the employee is doing their job well and could be worthy of a raise, or some type of reward. Employees that are not missed, and in a way, bring nothing to the table, are the employee’s companies can afford to get rid of. While employers providing paid time leave to employees can be good, it can also be bad. A major negative effect for companies providing paid vacation leaves is that employees will only see paid vacation leaves as just a use for vacations, resulting in employees not willing to take time off and showing up to work sick. Employees who deal with significant amounts of work and stress on a daily basis are the most unwilling to take time off. The reason is simple, it is because they are scared to return to work with mountains of work to get done. Another reason an employee will not want to utilize paid vacation time off when they are sick is to save vacation days for the future, resulting in diseases to spread. The spread of diseases in a work environment leads to others getting sick and others having to call time off, which then slows down productivity due to few employees working. Employees taking long paid vacation leaves can significantly affect them in both a positive and negative way. Employees that are constantly under excess stress have shown to significantly appreciate their vacations more than those who tended to slack off and do little to a minimum amount of work. In, “Holidays have pros and cons” by Stacey Wood, Woods claims “those [employees] who had suffered higher levels of stress before their holiday tended to enjoy the break more” (Woods). Whereas those who did not experience large amounts of stress before their break and were really pleased with their holiday “showed higher levels of stress and burnout afterwards' (Wood). 

Companies/employers that offer paid vacation leaves can experience an influx of employees asking for paid time off. As more employees ask for paid time off, companies will start to lose large amounts of money. Productivity levels will also drop due to employees missing work, and the company’s overall revenue will decrease. In fact, paid time off is not cheap, in “Employers, employees benefit from good company vacation plans companies lose money,” Robert Orzechowski (a past president of Berks County Chapter of the Society for Human Resource Management) states that “[paid vacation leave] is usually one of a company's most expensive benefits”. When paid leave is granted to employees, employees will start to take advantage of their employers by calling in “sick” more often. Which means less work will get done while employees are randomly taking time off because of the simple fact that they do not want to go to work that day. Yet, employees will expect employers to pay the time the employee takes off. Out of all of the well-develop countries, the United States is one of few countries that lacks in requiring employees to have a paid vacation leave. As a matter of fact, the Vice President of the Economic Policy Institute, John Schmitt, says “The United States is the only advanced economy out of thirteen in the world that does not guarantee its workers paid vacation days and paid holidays” (Hess qtd. Schmitt). This means that employees rely on their employers to decide whether or not their time off or holiday will be paid for. In other countries, such as Austria, paid time off is a necessity, in which the government instructs all employees to take time off. Employees in Austria “enjoy 13 paid public holidays and 25 days of paid annual leave” and are still successfully able to sustain an overall good economy. Companies in the United States should be required to pay employee’s vacation leave as it helps to lower an employee’s stress, prevents burnout and motivates them to do better at their job. 

Paid vacation leaves can be used as incentives, which can then improve a company’s productivity and increase its revenue. If other countries are successfully able to provide their workers with paid vacation leaves then why can we not do the same, the United States economy is just as good as theirs if not better. Hopefully, in the near future, the United States will require all employers to provide paid vacation leaves for their workers, so people are able to live a happier, stress-free life.