Over the past few months, as part of my research with 3Sixty Insights, I’ve delved deeper into the labor statistics of overwork, burnout culture, and time away from work. These fall under the broader category of work-life balance and help form a more pressing data-driven picture of employee well-being and experience.
In my previous piece, ‘The Productivity Dilemma,’ I outlined how American workers are typically more productive annually than their European colleagues but are so at the cost of their overall well-being. The caveat is that American workers trail behind nations like Luxembourg, Ireland, and
Norway in hourly labor productivity. In 2023, Luxembourg and Ireland worked twice the GDP per hour ($146 and $143, respectively) compared to the US ($70), which ranked between Guyana and Finland.
An American Phenomenon
In their 2023 article, ‘How Americans View Their Jobs,’ Pew Research Center found that only 51% of American workers say they are very satisfied with their jobs, despite two-thirds of those surveyed saying they feel happy with their workplace dynamics. In the same survey, 62% of workers said it was essential for them to have a job that offers paid time off for vacations, illness, or personal days.
Approximately half of workers with paid time off said they took less time than their employer even offered, essentially volunteering their time to their employer for free. This has led to a trend resulting in approximately 750 million vacation days going unused per year in the US. With roughly 160 million US adults employed, that means about five days of vacation go unused per year per working adult.
When workers don’t take their paid time off, they are essentially working for free, which can create resentment towards their employer. However, economically, this can result in tens of billions of dollars of free labor and forfeited benefits. As stated by Harvard Business Review, “Imagine the impact those vacations could have on the U.S. economy — on airlines, hotels, restaurants, attractions, and towns — not to mention the impact it would have on individuals’ stress levels.”
The US is unique because it is the only major economy without federally mandated paid time off or paid holidays for workers. The US leaves this up to employers. Employees can technically work for months or even years without any breaks. In contrast, direct economic competitors like Mexico and China have more vacation days than the US, even though the US has nearly twice the number of white-collar workers in its workforce.
This points to national culture and workplace culture as playing significant roles. Many workers simply refrain from taking more time off due to not feeling the need, fear of falling behind, guilt over burdening co-workers, concerns about job advancement, job security, or discouragement from managers. Something I’ll dive into further in my next piece.
What Can You Do with This Information?
In a globalized world where employers are laser-focused on optimizing every cent of every dollar that goes into payroll, it’s time for companies and HR technology to step up to the challenge of fully factoring this into employee experience and overall business performance.
Instead of trying to extract more productivity by demanding it from workers, leadership must take the initiative to set up an employee’s work life so that they willingly give that extra productivity. This is a responsibility that all levels of management should share.
Businesses looking to optimize day-to-day operations need to drill down into their daily productivity metrics so they can be compounded in the long term. Given the above statistics, there’s clearly a need for HR and leadership to be able to measure performance fluctuations and employee output accurately. This is valuable information that you can use to predict retention, attrition, and labour costs.
Maybe a once high-performing employee who hasn’t taken a vacation in two years is underperforming due to burnout, or a manager is cracking under the stress of managing a project two months past its deadline. People are much more than their employee number and title, and there are dozens of factors that HR can track to keep employees in the ‘Goldilocks zone’ of performance – not stressed and not too bored – so they can perform consistently day after day and not feel looked down upon when the time comes for a break. Perhaps the solution to turning around their performance isn’t a reprimand but a week of PTO that lets them return refreshed and focused.
I’d like to hear from organizations and vendors innovating in workforce management and positioning themselves for a more optimized workforce that understands the importance of employee experience and well-being in overall productivity.
