Let’s face it; we Americans are falling behind. Now, I’m not talking about education, race relations, healthcare, or any of the of the other issues that news reporters talk so often about; I’m talking about another, less often talked about issue; time off from work. It is truly staggering how little time we Americans get off from work when compared with other developed nations. In fact, I don’t think most Americans realize just how much we’re falling behind in this context; and more importantly, why they should care.
The statistics speak for themselves. Did you know that according to a study by the Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), the US is the only advanced economy without any legally required vacation. Or how about this, according to another study by the CEPR, the US is the only one of twenty-two surveyed wealthy nations to not have any legal requirement for businesses to give their employees any sick leave. The list goes on, we also don’t have maternity leave, and all of the other developed nations of the world do; the same goes for paternity leave, with the notable exception of Switzerland. Aside from sucking the joy out of workers lives, this phenomena has another effect; it hurts our productivity and makes us less effective in the long run.
To understand this, we first need to talk about human capital. Human capital, in the words of the great Charles Wheelan, is “the sum total of skills embodied within an individual.” (Naked Economics 127). In other words, human capital represents all of the things that make you useful to society; whether it be your intellect, your charisma, your creativity, or your ability to make the perfect blueberry pie. When companies hire people they are, in essence, choosing which person has the greatest value of human capital; and not only that; they are selecting the one who they think has the greatest amount of relevant human capital. For example, a public school system with an extremely small Portuguese-speaking community would not care if one of their candidates spoke fluent Portuguese, while an investment bank regularly doing business with Brazil would. How this relates to the argument of whether or not we should have more vacation days is this; as workers become less effective if not given the appropriate amount of time off; by not giving our workers time off; we are inadvertently lowering the quality of our human capital; despite our top corporation’s rigorous training and our nation’s world-class educational system; with 4 of the 5 best universities in the world within our borders.
Therefore, in order to continue our position as one of the most productive, and the world’s largest economy; I believe it is necessary for the federal government to set aside minimum requirements of paid time off from work that all employees are able to take without fear of being prosecuted. This is due to the fact that working for long periods of time has many negative effects on both the health of workers and productivity.
Vacations are necessary to worker productivity for four reasons. They reduce the likelihood of workers developing insomnia, and the associated health issues; saving the company time and money in the long run. They allow workers to take time to visit family members and loved ones; allowing them to devote time to these people, and therefore not be burdened with as many personal matters while they are working. In addition, perhaps due to fatigue and stress, workers are also more prone to make mistakes when they have not had any time off. These mistakes will cost the company time and money to correct. Stressed workers are also more likely to develop addictions to drugs and alcohol; and waste time doing unproductive activities at work. For this reason, vacation time is beneficial not only to the employee, but to the employer.
Many would point out at this point that many employers do in fact choose to offer vacation time to their employees; either realizing these benefits, because of skilled contract negotiators on the part of the potential employee, or just out of the goodness of their hearts. Yet the American system of rewarding vacation time has one main problem; people are punished for using it.
If an employee uses their full amount of allotted vacation time, they are often thought of as not being fully committed to their jobs, which can lead to them being looked over for promotions and raises. While one can understand the logic of rewarding those who work more, as we have already discussed, vacations are a necessity, and the employee who forfeited their time off in order to be more likely to be considered for these rewards is likely facing many negative effects as a result. This leads to many new employees refraining from using their vacation days, which then makes it a stigma for any of the other new employees to take vacations.
Often, upon departure from a company employees are able to turn in their unused vacation days for money, and this acts as a further incentive for employees not to take vacations. Many rational people decide to trade “mental health” days for extra money in the future. Therefore, if we wish to rebuild our society’s policies on vacation time, it is quite necessary that we remove this reward system for unused vacation days.
Some would even argue that it may in fact be necessary to for people to be required to take vacations. While this would end the stigma around taking vacation; it seems excessive to force employees to take vacation. What if somebody’s required vacation period is at a time when they are desperately needed for a project, or during a period when there’s a lot of work to be done, like tax season. While there are many ways to solve this issue, like giving a range of days in which the unused days can be used; if the employee is truly not feeling the need to take a vacation, why should we force them?
This all goes back to the idea of human capital due to the fact that due to our country’s wealth and our educational system, we have some of the most valuable human capital in the world. Therefore, it is such a shame that we have so much potential for extra productivity that has gone to waste due to inadequate policies surrounding the use of vacation time, sick leave, and maternity leave.
Other countries which have more forgiving policies have not suffered due to the decreased days of work; with countries with extremely generous leave policies such as Luxembourg, Ireland, and Norway; being more productive than the US on a per-person basis.
I believe if our nation wants to continue its path to eternal glory, better developed vacation, as well as sick leave, and maternity and paternity leave policies are the next logical stepping stones. If they weren’t good ideas, why would pretty much every other developed nation have mandated them?
