Do you ever wish you had more annual leave? Does it seem like it’s time to go back to work just as soon as you’ve turned your “out of office” on? Do you have disgruntled employees who feel they should be entitled to more time off work? The chances are you’ve answered yes, yes and yes.
Well then, why is that we don’t tend to use all our annual leave entitlement?
Based on research by Glassdoor, ACAS has reported that only half of UK employees take all their annual leave allowance. Typically workers take just three-quarters of their leave – and with the statutory annual leave entitlement for a typical full-time job being 28 days, this means employees are losing over 6 days of leave per year. That’s more than a week!
The report also goes on to say that even when people are on holiday from work, 44% said they worked during that time, citing reasons such as “fear of getting behind”, “wanting a pay rise”, “feeling the job wouldn’t get done otherwise” or simply because they were unable to disconnect (maybe us crazy Brits should take a leaf out of the French book on the “Right To Disconnect”!) Worryingly, 6 % of people feared that they would lose their job if they didn’t work whilst on leave.
We should encourage employees to take their full leave entitlement and to switch off (where possible) from what’s going on at the office to help with their mental and physical well-being – workplace stress is a real and increasing threat to our workforce.
If you would like to talk more about annual leave entitlements, employee well-being or any other personnel issue, contact one of the Park City experts today. We’d be delighted to help.
