Didn't use your vacation days last year? Blame your boss

Although there have been studies suggesting that taking a vacation can improve your health, help you build stronger relationships and even give you a better chance of getting a promotion, American workers are increasingly reluctant to use their paid time off. According to recent research conducted by Project: Time Off, even though 96% of employees agree that having time away from the office is important, an average of 41% of workers fail to use all of their allotted vacation days.

But Project: Time Off doesn't put the blame on the workers themselves: instead, it says that our collective reluctance to leave our desks could be because our bosses don't encourage it — or even talk about it. A full 67% of the workers surveyed said they had never heard anything from their managers about vacation, nothing positive, nothing negative, nothing in-between. More than half (53%) of those managers said they "[set] a poor or bad example" when it comes to using their own paid time off.

According to a recent Skift survey, 41% of Americans didn’t take one single vacation day in 2015, an almost identical rerun of the 42% who reported the same thing in 2014. That hasn't always been the case. Project: Time Off reported that from 1976 until 2000, the average American worker took 20 vacation days each year, a number that has slowly been dwindling during the past decade. Now, the average employed adult takes 16 days off, which means we're collectively slogging through almost one full week more than our parents did. If this decline continues, the organization warns, by 2046, the average American worker will be taking ZERO vacation days.

So how can we reverse this depressing trend? Project: Time Off suggests that employees should recognize the difference between being dedicated and being a "work martyr;" do a better job of planning time off in advance; and upon returning, they should talk about their trip with their coworkers (this could probably go either way. Either your colleagues will be inspired to plan their own trip or they'll consider murdering you after you pronounce the word #sweetvacay out loud). If you're in a management role, you're encouraged to tell your workers that it's OK to use their time off, to reassure them that their work will be covered during their absence and to create or emphasize policies that actually encourage them to use vacation days.

That doesn't sound so bad, does it?