Dude! Sweet!

[eee1313]

An e-mail came through today for everyone at my company. They're changing the vacation policy effective Jan. 1, 2006. Instead of 10 days a year, with 15 days after 5 years, it's now going to be 15 days a year with 20 days after 5 years. 3 weeks vacation a year! Hooray! That's awesome! This means I shouldn't have any problems balancing a trip to Palm Springs with fava_bean, a trip to Rhode Island to visit the Yakpoos, and time off at Christmas. Rock on!

Comments

[spicedrum.livejournal.com]

That is v. v. cool.

[kazzy-cee.livejournal.com]

Wow! That seems so little! Over here in the UK you would expect to get at least 4 weeks or 5 weeks of paid vacation time in a job (my husband actually gets 29 days of paid vacation).

In the US you get additional days too don't you - like personal days? - or is that included in the vacation time?

(sorry! ignorant UK resident here!)

[eee1313.livejournal.com]

It honestly depends on the company. Most give vacation time, with a few personal days and then sick days separately. My first job was completely not the norm -- they lumped all our sick, personal, and vacation days together in a big pool that we could tap from whenever we wanted. Each employee got 5 weeks total. Which, if you never got sick, meant 5 weeks of vacation a year. Woooooo! That's COMPLETELY unheard of for about 99% of America. A lot of places have 2 weeks vacation a year, plus the normal 6 federal holidays, plus a few personal and/or sick days, which you acrue based off how much you've worked. There's the attitude here that working more = higher productivity, but really working without a break = employees getting burned out completely. I'm a big fan of the European way of working, with more vacation and a shorter work week. I mean, it's not like the UK is a third-world country; you're doing just fine with some added vacation time. The US should adopt that policy, too.

[kazzy-cee.livejournal.com]

Thanks for explaining! I am always amazed at how long your working day is too - my Lj friends seem to go in to work very early and leave very late. Over here you are usually expected to work around 8 hours a day (including a 1 hour lunch break). Extra time for support staff is paid as overtime, and for managers tends to be expected without pay.

Long hours are usually awarded extra vacation time too.

LOL @ it's not like the UK is a third-world country - I think we're doing OK, but we just dropped down to 5th in the league tables of productivity after the USA, Germany, Japan and now China!