America's Vacation Culture Is Dying. Here's How to Revive It.

(Bloomberg Opinion/Sarah Green Carmichael) — Ah, summer. That time of year when Europeans take vacation, and Americans envy Europeans.

Americans get the world's least amount of vacation time, in part because we're one of the few countries without labor laws mandating some baseline of paid time off. And many of us don't even use all the time we're given. We also go the longest between vacations, according to an Expedia survey from June.

When you ask Americans why, the answers tend to sound the same: We're too anxious to ask our bosses to use the days we've earned. We worry taking vacation will make us seem uncommitted — and maybe even be remembered during the next round of layoffs. We fret about falling behind on our work or leaving more for our coworkers to do. We're just too overwhelmed and busy to plan a vacation, much less actually go on one.

The inability to unplug has been a longstanding problem in American life, but it seems worse post-pandemic, when many knowledge workers have more flexibility over their work location and hours, but where the price of that flexibility has been to remain always reachable. As hybrid work schedules have solidified, we've ended up with a kind of lopsidedness: clear expectations around when employees are supposed to be in the office, but none at all about when staff can truly unplug.

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The result is that many workers now feel like they are never not working: 44% say they feel burned out, according to the Society for Human Resource Management. Self-reported stress levels are now higher than before the pandemic among working-age Americans, according to the American Psychological Association. In a 2023 survey, the organization found that stress is particularly acute among the young, who have the least experience of office culture and are most anxious about fulfilling managers' expectations.

It shouldn't be this way. It doesn't have to be this way.

The mental benefits of time off are profound. Even short breaks help us gain necessary perspective, restore our patience and empathy, increase our creativity, decrease our stress and improve our health. Some of this time we can claw back on our own, but it's even more powerful when we do it together.

Think of how lovely it feels on those few days when (most) office jobs truly shut down: New Year's Day, July 4, Thanksgiving, Christmas. No emails. No calls. No sense of falling behind. It only emphasizes what's become a truism of the always-on economy: For any of us to get a day off, we all have to get a day off.

There are ways colleagues can band together to arrange planned time off. Harvard Business School professor Leslie Perlow studied this years ago. She found that even in consulting — an industry that is notorious for a 24/7/365 mentality — it was possible for teams to arrange a rota of evenings off. It took effort to make even that small amount of time off predictable and required. But it also had benefits, improving not only the consultants' morale, but also their communication and collaboration. Knowing that a colleague would be unreachable, even for just one evening, forced the team to plan ahead. That planning was good for business.

Collective efforts are also possible — and perhaps even more effective — at the organizational level. A four-day week, a series of summer Fridays, a week-long office closure in August or December: Such company-wide efforts make it easier for everyone to truly relax. Other time-off innovations include mandatory vacation every two months and shutting email systems down after hours.

If some of these measures seem a bit drastic, that just highlights how hard it is to beat burnout only by setting one's own boundaries. Personal efforts are doomed to be a bit flimsy, not to mention resented by one's bosses and peers, if they fall far outside the cultural norm.

Managers should make it clear that they expect employees to use their PTO, and experiment with processes and norms that make it possible for workers to truly unplug. That, in turn, will produce employees who return with better ideas and more energy. And it will help prevent staff from descending into burnout, which tends to produce mistakes, conflict and disorganization.

Better vacations are possible. But rugged individualism isn't the answer — we need to work together to make them happen. How very European.