In many parts of Europe, it’s common for workers to take off weeks at a time, especially during the summer. Envious Americans say it’s time for the U.S. to follow suit.
Some 66% of U.S. workers say companies should adopt extended vacation policies, like a month off in August, in their workplaces, according to a Morning Consult survey of 1,047 U.S. adults.
Team leader from Germany here: This might oversell European holiday-regulations a fair bit here. Not one of the people in my team will get one whole month off in summer. How’s that supposed to work? I can spare two people on holiday at any given time, So if all of my 13 workers want to have a week or two in July/August/September, none of them can have more than three weeks, and you’d have to be lucky for 3 weeks to align with the other’s wishes. Otherwise, two weeks is realistic.
2 weeks is still exceptional. 2 weeks off at the same time happens in the US, but it’s rare.
I’ve found most people in the US use PTO to have a 4-day weekend when a national holiday is also occurring.
Also team leader in Germany here. I’m currently on a three week vacation. Two members of my team take 4 consecutive weeks of vacation each. There are only 8 people in my team so impact of one person missing is even greater. There are weeks when only half the team is not on vacation. Our labour agreement doesn’t even allow us to deny vacation requests. We just “simply” plan ahead and don’t take on projects we can’t handle during that time. So it highly depends on circumstances whether this is possible, it’s definitely not generalizable.
