Millennials are Quiet Vacationing: A Sneaky Trend Sweeping The Workplace

By Moon Harper

May 30, 2024 05:30 AM EDT

Forget about quietly quitting. Millennials have come up with a new sneaky way to skip work: quiet vacationing.

Many Americans do not have guaranteed paid time off from work, but even when they do, they are not using it all. According to a new Harris Poll survey of 1,170 American workers, 78% of US workers admit to not taking all their paid time off days, with Gen Z and millennials being the highest percentages.

Younger professionals avoid asking for time off as they experience pressure to adhere to deadlines and uphold productivity levels. Libby Rodney, chief strategy officer at The Harris Poll, explains that they feel anxious about asking for paid time off (PTO) because they do not want to appear unproductive.

It is not quite openly quitting, but more like quiet vacationing.

Millennials are "Quiet Vacationing"

Many millennials in the workforce have found workarounds to play hooky, with nearly 4 in 10 admitting to taking time off without informing their managers. A similar proportion of millennials admit to "moving their mouse" to appear active on company messaging platforms like Slack or Microsoft Teams, even when they are not actually working or schedule out-of-office messages to give the impression that they are working overtime.

Rodney notes that there is a significant workaround culture in play in a CNBC article. While Gen Zers tend to be more vocal about workplaces that discourage time off, millennials prefer to handle it themselves but discreetly to achieve a work-life balance behind the scenes.

How Can Employers Possibly Address The "Quiet Vacationing" Trend?

Rodney suggests that when individuals feel compelled to sneak out for breaks, it indicates a lack of supportiveness in their workplace's paid time off (PTO) system or culture.

To alleviate this tension, bosses can be transparent about the process of requesting time off, normalize the practice by taking time off as a boss, support their employees when they take time off, and even mandate a certain amount of time off.

Unlimited PTO is not always the answer. Rather than relying solely on unlimited PTO, employers can explore creative approaches to their time off benefits. For instance, they could implement company-wide week-long shutdowns around major holidays, compensate new hires for taking a vacation before they start, or mandate that employees take a certain number of PTO days each quarter to distribute their time off more evenly throughout the year.

According to the Harris Poll survey, many Americans express the desire for the United States to implement laws similar to those found in Europe. These laws would establish clear boundaries between working hours and personal time and include policies such as extended vacation periods (such as a month off in August), longer lunch breaks, workweeks shorter than 40 hours, and regulations to safeguard slower response times outside of work hours.