This week school will be out for our kids and I found this SHRM article (membership required) interesting and timely. The article discusses how we here in the US are opting to move our vacations from the 2 week long once a year vacations to more 3-4 day weekend stints. A study was conducted by Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. that looked at vacation habits of U.S. workers.
€œWe are becoming a nation of the long weekend vacation, with workers looking ahead to each Monday/Friday holiday for the opportunity to turn a three-day weekend into a four- or five-day weekend. The switch to mini-vacations will only be accelerated by soaring gas prices as travelers stay close to home or even stay at home and use the time to work on the house or explore locally,€ firm President and CEO John A. Challenger said in a press release.
This was echoed in a survey conducted by CareerBuilder.com from Feb. 15 to March 6, 2007. They found:
- €¢ 70 percent of workers receive two weeks or more of paid vacation, and nearly 25 percent receive four or more weeks.
€¢ 12 percent do not receive a paid vacation.
€¢ 9 percent lie to their employers, telling them they can€™t be reached while on vacation.
€¢ 20 percent won€™t take a vacation in 2007, 27 percent will take five days or less, and 9 percent will limit themselves to weekend getaways.
Now couple those statistics with the fact we are more available than ever before with cell phones, laptops and PDA’s. It is getting to be almost impossible to disappear for a couple of days to unwind. I’m in Dallas right now meeting with a couple clients and there is no disappearing from the office tasks. Emails still need responses, my cell phone keeps ringing . . . heck, I’m even writing this post. The thought of the family vacation as we knew it back in the ’60’s and ’70’s is quickly disappearing.