Workers who don’t take holiday leave are bad for business

UK workers are wasting £627 million of paid holiday, a new report finds.

More than half of all workers will not use up their holiday entitlement this year, either because they feel guilty about lumbering colleagues with more work or are too busy.

Even though Britain has a reputation for the longest work hours and the fewest bank holidays in Europe, a new study reveals that most employees do not take their full annual leave. Of an estimated 60 per cent of workers with holidays still to take at the end of 2005, just 26 per cent will be able to roll them over to next year.

The research, by the travel insurance firm Churchill, found that workers' conscientiousness meant they were either too busy or felt too guilty to use up their allocation in the given time.

Of the 1,000 employees questioned, 43 per cent said they felt guilty about taking time off because it left a bigger workload for those remaining. Another 37 per cent claimed to be too busy to have a holiday, 20 per cent said they just forgot to do it. Nearly half (47 per cent) of those still with leave left will take days off in December just to use up the allocation, rather than because they had planned it.

Lawyers, sales staff and catering workers are least likely to use up their allowance, while tourism, advertising and recruitment staff are most likely not to waste any.

The average holiday allocation in British workplaces is 20 to 25 days a year.

Yet although so many people do not use up their allocation, some 45 per cent of workers think the entitlement should be 30 or even 35 days a year.

Christine Webber, a psychotherapist, commented:

"Time off work is very important. We need to stop believing that we're so indispensable at work and try to look after our minds and bodies much more."

She added that employers who exploit the fact their staff work through leave are not really getting a benefit, as it is often a false economy.

"Employers often allow their staff to go without their holidays in the mistaken belief that fewer vacations will result in more productivity," she said.

"But too much work and too little leisure is counter-productive, as employees tend to get sick more often and more stressed if they don't take the breaks they're entitled to."

According to theHSE, up to 13.4 million days a year are lost because of stress, which has enormous implications for employees and employers.

A survey of 1000 employees carried out in May found that the average employee misses out on more than three months of holiday over their working lives, with many blaming the pressure of work for not taking time off. Julie Hurst, Director of the Work Life Balance Centre comments that "overwork can lead to a huge increase in mistakes".

Statutory annual leave is in effect a health and safety issue. It is not obligatory for workers to take their minimum holiday entitlement, but employees working for a long period of time without a break might not only be a health and safety risk to themselves but also a security risk. So an employer might want to consider issuing a notice to the employee requiring him or her to take a period of leave if it is not being taken.