The Harder It Is To Do This One Thing At Work, The More Valuable You Are To Your Job
It's not necessarily a good thing...
GaudiLab | Shutterstock Sometimes being a high performer and asset to your team at work backfires. Your hard work and dedication may result in performance punishments and even burnout.
Content creator and artist Don Moyer, known as @calamityware online, noted this trend, explaining that the more difficult it is for you to do one specific thing at work, the more valuable you are to your job — usually to the detriment of your work-life balance.
He explained that the harder it is to take time off from work, the more valuable you are to your job.
"Isn't it funny that a lazy employee can take two weeks off and nobody cares," he observed, "but if you're a hard-working employee and you try and take one day off, everybody loses their mind?"
Unfortunately, this seems to be a common occurrence for many employees. Often workers feel unsure about using their PTO for this very reason.
An increasing number of employees do not use all of their PTO.
In 2023, 62% of workers with PTO did not use all of their vacation time, letting a third of it go to waste, according to a survey released by Sorbet, a fintech lending firm. Of these workers, 5.5% didn’t take any time off last year.
The share of Americans with unused PTO was found to be "climbing at an alarming rate," the Sorbet report stated, nearly doubling since 2019. The company discovered that the average cash value of all that unused PTO comes out to nearly $3,000 per worker.
Similar conclusions were reached in another survey by the Pew Research Center, making it definitive that too many employees are not utilizing their rightfully earned PTO.
Researchers surveyed 5,902 Americans who work either full or part-time jobs and found that nearly 46% of American workers aren't taking all of their allotted paid time off. Of those, 52% said they "don't feel they need to take more time off," and 49% said that they worry about falling behind at work if they do.
Many workers admitted to feeling 'guilty' about taking time off from work.
A considerable percentage of employees expressed hesitation and even guilt about taking their rightfully earned time off.
The Pew Research survey found that 43% of employees who don't use all of their PTO said that they feel bad about their co-workers taking on additional work, while 19% cited concerns about job advancement, 16% worried they'd lose their jobs, and 12% admitted that their superiors discourage them from taking time off.
This feeds into a culture of burnout that benefits employers and hurts employees. You must prioritize work-life balance and that includes utilizing your PTO, which, might I add, is also worth money.
There's a reason why many companies pay employees for their unused PTO when they leave the position.
Nia Tipton is a staff writer with a bachelor’s degree in creative writing and journalism who covers news and lifestyle topics that focus on psychology, relationships, and the human experience.