France has longest holiday leave
But survey by online travel company finds 90% French still feel “vacation deprived” as they continue to work on holiday
FRANCE tops a recent survey for the number of days of holiday leave given to employees – but 90% of French claim they are “holiday deprived”.
The Vacation Deprivation Study of 8,535 working adults in 24 countries, was carried out by the online travel firm Expedia.
While French workers got the most holiday, South Korean and Japanese staff were left at the bottom of the pile.
Though France leads the world in paid leave, with 30 days a year, 90% of French respondents said they agreed with the sentence “I feel vacation deprived” - well above the global average.
The survey found that while technically the French may take the most holidays, an overwhelming majority indicated that they do not unplug from work, with 93% of French respondents saying they “constantly, regularly or sometimes” check work emails and voicemails while on vacation.
(A poll by Monster.com earlier this year found that workers from France, the UK and North America are the most likely to bring work with them while on holiday).
Next up, Italian employees, 83% of whom said they were “vacation deprived”, followed by 78% in Spain and 74% in Germany.
Norwegians were the least disgruntled of respondents, with only 17% of respondents saying they felt they needed more vacations. Norway is followed by Mexico (38%), Denmark (39%) and Sweden (44%).
The findings are particularly interesting given that Europeans get more vacation time than any other region, the report pointed out.
For comparison, though the Japanese are entitled to 18 vacation days a year, workers there only take an average of seven days, leaving 11 days on the table.
Similarly, workers in South Korea also take seven days out of a possible 10, while Thais take 8 and Malaysian workers take 14 vacation days.
In the US, Americans also took less vacation in 2013: of their annual 14-day allotment, employees took 10 days off, leaving four days unspent, twice as many as the year previous.
"No one retires wishing they'd spent more time at their desk," said the vice president of Expedia.com, John Morrey.
"There are countless reasons that vacation days go unused -- failure to plan, worry, forgetfulness, you name it. But rested employees are more productive employees, so taking regular vacations may well help the company more than failing to do so."
Photo and text: Afp/Relaxnews/Connexion
