Paid time off is precious. The average private-sector worker in the U.S. who has been at their job for at least a year is given 11 days of paid leave annually, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Many experience difficulty unplugging from work when they use the time they do have. But a new report might help employees make the most of their PTO, even if it’s not a whole lot.
The report comes from Blink, a mobile-first employee experience platform, which analyzed the U.S. federal holiday calendar to show employees how they can “hack” their PTO allowance to get the most out of it. By building vacations around mandated days off, the idea is that workers can feel like they’re getting a lot more time away from work. In reality, they’re just using their PTO creativity—or “PTO maxxing.”
The report came up with an exact calendar that employees can use to structure their PTO. One example is building around the Fourth of July. In the case of the midsummer holiday, the PTO strategy is to take off Thursday, July 2, and/or Monday, July 6. The result is a four- or five-day vacation that uses only one or two days of PTO. Other examples include taking off the Wednesday before Thanksgiving or New Year’s Eve (which falls on a Thursday this year) for an extended break.
“Strategically spreading vacation days around federal holidays creates more breaks to prevent burnout before it starts,” Blink COO Lauren Burns said in a press release.
Given burnout is a massive work-related issue, with some studies suggesting that around 82% of employees are at risk, PTO-maxxing seems like a crafty way to combat office drudgery. However, there may be a missing link between having vacation days and actually using them. A 2023 Pew Research Center report found that more than 4 in 10 workers (46%) don’t actually take their time off to begin with. Salaried workers are far more likely to take time off compared to hourly workers (52% compared to 39%).
About half of workers (52%) who said they took less time off than was offered claimed not to need the time off, while 49% said they were too worried about falling behind if they were to take time away from work. So, whether it’s because workers aren’t tuned into the fact that taking breaks is an important part of caring for their mental health and maybe even for being more productive overall, or because they’re worried about consequences, collectively speaking, employees are working a ton of extra days they could be using to lounge by a pool. Or even just on a couch.