A new study explores why so many American workers feel guilty about using their paid time off, and why some skip it altogether.
Karen Tan, a Singapore native and assistant professor of Tourism and Hospitality Management at Middle Tennessee State University, set out to study the “vacation guilt” she noticed after moving to the U.S. in 2016. Despite America’s focus on mental health and wellness, Tan was struck by how rarely that translated into actual workplace culture.
“Surprisingly, though, I noticed that many of my American friends felt guilty about taking time off that they’d earned,” Tan wrote in The Conversation. “So as a scholar of tourism and hospitality, I wanted to understand how and why this happened.”
For the study, Tan partnered with tourism scholar Robert Li to explore the emotional toll of taking paid time off. They interviewed 15 employees who had felt guilty about using their vacation days and surveyed 860 full-time workers who receive PTO through their jobs.
The research focused on whether employees felt judged or less respected about stepping away from work. They found that 1 in 5 respondents experienced “vacation guilt,” with many admitting that these feelings made them hesitate or shorten their time off. Some even apologized for using their PTO or avoided mentioning their vacation plans at all to coworkers.
Expanding on a 2024 Pew Research Center survey that revealed nearly half of U.S. workers don’t use all of their allotted vacation days, often feeling discouraged from doing so, Tan found that time off, meant to offer rest and relief, has instead become a source of stress. She also offers advice to employers on how to shift workplace culture and prevent the guilt and hesitation that often arise when vacation is brought up.
“For paid time off to serve its purpose, I think employers need to provide more than vacation days,” Tan wrote. “They also need to have a supportive culture that readily encourages employees to use this benefit without having to worry about repercussions.”
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