Employees Are Being Offered Cash Incentives to Take Time Off
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Here's your money briefing for Friday, April 9th. I'm J.R. Whelan for The Wall Street Journal. With COVID restrictions still in place in many parts of the U.S. and travel restricted to some countries, a lot of people have been holding on to their vacation days. And that's not great for companies. And now some of them are offering their workers motivations to take time off. Cold hard cash.
this could lead to millions of dollars spent to offer this sort of benefit. They feel like that is worth it if it leads to employees coming back, feeling more rejuvenated, able to kind of better help the company's clients, to better help their peers. All of that could pay off.
And that's not all. WSJ's Chip Cutter covers workplace issues for the Wall Street Journal. He's been talking to corporate and HR executives about these new incentives. We'll have more from him after the break.
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Usually employees are happy to take their vacation days, but for the past year, with nowhere to go, people are waiting longer to put in their PTO. And companies are starting to be concerned about employee burnout and potential scheduling problems if everyone rushes to cram in holidays later in the year. And some are even offering financial incentives to take days.
Why are companies offering cash to employees to take vacation time?
Our workplace reporter Chip Cutter has been looking into this, and he joins me now. Chip, thanks for taking the time to chat.
Thanks for having me.
So you've been here with us before talking about how vacation is giving companies fits. So what's pushed some of them over the line to start offering money?
Many companies feel that they've just run out of other options. They feel that they need bolder experiments to get people to disconnect now. So the accounting and consulting giant, PWC, is going farther than most, and it will begin paying employees to actually use their vacation time. And the way it will work is that employees will receive $250 for every full week of vacation that they take, up to $1,000 a year. And the thinking is that employees will feel they're leaving money on the table if they don't use their vacation time. The company's U.S. chairman, Tim Ryan, told me that economic incentives work and that the company feels like it at least wants to try this, feeling like they've done other things.
They've encouraged employees to take vacation. Leaders have talked about their own vacation. They've tried many different approaches. And PwC's leaders feel that this might be the time to try something else.
And now we're talking about monetary costs here, but what is the human cost that companies are really concerned about?
Well, companies really worry that if workers are basically rolling out of bed, sitting for hours in front of their laptops, and doing that day after day with little break, that they're fatigued, that they may be kind of physically present but not mentally there. And so that's why many bosses are encouraging workers to take a break. And we're seeing all different sorts of experiments really aimed at trying to get people to use their vacation time now.
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