Americans are changing the way they think about time, work, and vacation. The pandemic turbocharged some ongoing trends in the US, and now Americans want to get more out of their time. This means that they want to travel more, work less, and set their working hours around their busy schedules, rather than trying to fit in activities around their work schedule.
This means that if you want to attract and retain some of the best talent, you will need to offer competitive vacation packages and flexible work arrangements.
The Pandemic Changed Everything
For years, Americans had been putting more emphasis on establishing a more positive work-life balance. However, the pandemic completely changed the conversation.
With COVID-19 claiming the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans, including some relatively young and healthy individuals, people started to re-evaluate their priorities. They decided that work was no longer their top priority in life, and that they wanted to put more emphasis on living their life to the fullest in case life wasn’t as long as they expected.
At the same time, COVID-19 shutdowns closed offices and caused people to work from home. After the initial chaos of figuring out how people could actually do their work (possibly while assisting their kids with schooling) from home, people settled into a comfortable routine. They figured out how to work efficiently from home and put the extra time they saved by not having to commute toward family, hobbies, household chores, and even earning a little extra on the side.
These new attitudes and expectations continue to shape how Americans look at vacation time and the work week.
Most People Feel Vacation-Deprived
Since 2000, Expedia has been asking people how they feel about travel, and their 2023 report makes it clear: workers want more vacation. The proportion of people reporting that they felt vacation-deprived was the highest level seen in a decade (62%), a big increase from 2016, when less than half of people reported feeling vacation-deprived.
Americans report being slightly more vacation-deprived than the global average (63%), which seems a little low given that Americans have only an average of 12.5 vacation days per year, and they only take 11 of them – the fewest of any country surveyed.
But They’re Vacation-Dedicated
People aren’t just accepting that they don’t have enough vacation time. They are dedicated to getting their vacation days this year. When asked how they were handling their vacation time this year, the majority responded that they intended to travel, “no matter what.”
What does that mean? It means that even when feeling the pinch of inflation, twice as many people are planning to cut back on groceries or eating out as plan on cancelling a trip. It might even mean changing jobs. More than two-thirds of vacation-deprived respondents said they would switch jobs if they could get more time off.
Daily Time Demands Have Also Shifted
The vacation angle is only part of the picture when it comes to understanding how workers’ expectations have changed. Another important issue is their attitude toward their day-to-day work schedules.
When people worked from home, they discovered that they had more time to spend because they weren’t wasting hours commuting every week. They found profitable ways to spend this time, with family, friends, hobbies, and chores. Many people even put this extra time toward their side-hustle which could represent a significant chunk of income. Now they don’t want to give these up.
In addition, people found themselves forced to work at odd hours. Remote teams sometimes demanded working on the schedule of a distant time zone and helping kids with their daily schoolwork forced parents to work late nights or on the weekends to keep up. Some struggled, some coped, and some thrived. This last group found that they loved doing their work when it suited them and found that their productivity and dedication increased tremendously.
The 40-Hour, 5-Day Work Week Is Dead
As a result of these changes to workers’ daily routines, there is a growing consensus that the 40-hour 5-day work week is dead. People may have accepted that they might have to go back into the office, but they don’t want to lose the time they’ve gotten accustomed to spending on other activities.
Alongside this, people’s annoyance is growing toward work expectations that they don’t perceive as valuable. Meaningless tasks, unproductive meetings, even unnecessary emails are sources of frustration. People want the ability to cut out these time-wasting tasks so that they can get their core responsibilities completed in a shorter time, then spend their time more productively and more freely.
What Employees Want from You
So, what can you do to make sure your employees are more satisfied in their work? There are a few key findings that come up repeatedly.
A Culture That Values Their Personal Time
One thing that employees want is an understanding from their employer that work may not be their top priority. They’re prepared to do the job you hired them for, but they want to do it in a way that doesn’t interfere with their other priorities.
If you are asking for their extra time, they want you to really appreciate how much of a sacrifice that represents. They need you to honor that sacrifice by making sure that you’re not wasting their regular working hours with meaningless work.
Clear, Reasonable Expectations
As we mentioned, people still want to do their jobs, and they want to do them well. However, they are asking that you establish very clear expectations about what their job truly is. Define their core job responsibilities and make sure your workplace metrics match up with those responsibilities.
Freedom to Work When, Where, and How They Want
There are many people clamoring for changes to the modern workweek. The most popular request is a 4-day workweek, favored by 87% of Americans. Many say they’re prepared to sacrifice things to get the shorter work week, though they generally don’t want to give up vacation time, pay, or career advancement.
However, there’s also a general sense that people want work to be more flexible. With their core responsibilities defined, people want the freedom to achieve those responsibilities in ways that they see as most efficient. This may be working in the office with meeting-free days, or it might involve working at home for part of the time with less emphasis on being available at certain hours. It may even involve process innovations that can help your organization improve efficiency overall.
You’ll See the Benefits
Although these changes to your workplace routines will make some demands on your organization, it’s probably worth it to make them. If you do, you’re likely to see some significant benefits, including:
- Recruitment and Retention of Skilled Workers
- High Employee Engagement and Productivity
- Lower Overhead
Policies that favor a healthier work/life balance can help you recruit and retain highly skilled workers. The workers that are most in demand have their pick of positions, and they’re likely to favor the ones that come with the best benefits. Allowing for remote work lets you recruit from an even larger talent pool, which helps you find the best candidates. In addition, remote work and favorable vacation policies help with retention. Remember: 67% of vacation-deprived workers would switch jobs for better vacation benefits.
You’ll also get better work out of the employees you have. Over 80% of workers say that vacations make them more engaged and more productive. The same is true of flexible work arrangements, which are highly praised for helping productivity, including a four-day work week, which may reduce the number of hours worked, but doesn’t reduce the amount of work accomplished.
When all of this is managed properly, your business might see significant reductions in your overhead thanks to these flexible work arrangements. You’ll be able to right-size your office space. Rather than giving everyone a desk and a computer, focus on shared workstations, while people who work from home don’t need any workstation at all.
With all these benefits, it makes sense for employers to embrace this change in attitudes about work and vacation. The results can be good for your business and great for your employees.
