SHRM Survey: 90-94 Percent of HR Pros See Benefits of Paid Vacation

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newspaper roll According to a new survey from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM),  90-94 percent of HR professionals believe that improved wellness, morale, performance and productivity are all benefits of employees taking paid vacation. The Vacation Benefits and Their Impact on the Workplace survey, done in collaboration with the U.S. Travel Association, also found that more than two-thirds of HR professionals either agree or strongly agree that workers who started taking more vacation would experience:

  • Higher levels of job satisfaction (74 percent)
  • Increased productivity (72 percent)
  • Perform better (69 percent)
  • Experience greater engagement (67 percent)

Even though HR pros see an array of benefits in taking paid vacation, the survey also revealed that 61 percent of organizations reported that employees have an average of three or more unused vacation days each year.

“It is important for managers and company leaders to see the value in employees taking a vacation,” said Lisa Orndorff, SHRM’s manager of employee relations and engagement. “They should also encourage their people to use their leave, ‘unplug’ if possible and take a break from the work, even if it’s just a day or two every few months.”

Other survey findings include:

  • Three in five organizations (62 percent) allow employees to roll over vacation days (54 percent offer  limited rollover days and 8 percent offer unlimited rollover), while 38 percent do not allow employees to roll over vacation time from year-to-year.
  • For the organizations with “use it or lose it” plans, 36 percent of their employees had three or more unused vacation days, while a whopping 73 percent of workers from organizations with limited rollover plans had three or more unused days.
  • Three-quarters (77 percent) of organizations that don’t offer rollover reported that most employees (81-100 percent) use all of their vacation days each year, while 31 percent of companies that allow rollover reported that most of their staff (81-100 percent) use all of their vacation days each year.

By Shala Marks