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.
German here: I have yet to witness these “European-style” vacations mentioned in the post title.
Most workplaces seem to frown at people taking >2 consecutive weeks of vacation, esp. if they don’t have kids and do it in main travel season / during school holidays. Handing in ~3 weeks of holidays often at least needs some kind of explanation to the team-lead, e.g. “I have school kids who have their summer holidays and we need to keep them busy until school starts again.”
I have yet to see a single company going easy on someone saying “I’ll be off all of August KTHXBYE”.
German here as well - this hasn’t been an issue in any company I’ve worked so far, all didn’t have an issue with 3+ weeks.
I work in IT for a major telecom provider in Scandinavia, and almost everyone takes 3 weeks summer vacation, mostly at the same time.
Management recommends taking as much as possible over the summer, as we have a 5-6 week “slow period” when people’s 3 weeks don’t align.
Other than that, it’s common to just take the rest during other school holidays.
We get 6 weeks by default and earn our way up to 7 weeks after 5 years.
My prior gig, all of our EU people took like 3-4 weeks off at a time. Probably industry-related?
in some sectors, like construction, they just all have to take summer holiday together. That’s usually like 2 consecutive weeks.
Most sectors do not tho. Depending on the sector and the specific job, they just set an email autoreply: hi, i’m chilling by the pool rn, if it’s urgent ask colleague x who is a bit informed about what i normally do and they should be able to help you, (we’ll clean up the mess when i’m back)