Ricky Martin’s Blog

The summer vacation season is in full swing in the northern hemisphere, and here in Montreal it is no different. We are now starting the beginning of the “Construction Holidays” here in Quebec, which is usually a quiet time for most companies in the area usually shut down or scale back operations. all this talk about vacations and taking time off got me thinking about how vacation is given out all over the world.

I have had the great opportunity to work, in several places around the world, with that in mind here is a quick breakdown of the standard vacation allowance (not counting standard holidays Federal/Provincial/State) in each Country I have worked in:

Canada: standard is 10 days, usually goes up to 15 days after about 5 years of service, depends on industry and company.

United States of America: Standard is 10 days, usually as with Canada after a certain number of years of service and/or experience this goes up to 15 days.

United Kingdom: Standard is 20 days. and it can go up with experience and years of service.

So with all that time, does everyone get to use it, can you use it?

from my own experience, with my current employer they encourage people to use their time off, and actually can penalize you if you have too much time accumulated without taking it, which is a great incentive to use it.

Previously it was a struggle with some of the roles I had, as in one role I could not take a real “vacation” as there was no one with the skill set to cover for my role available, so I had to be available in case something happened that they needed my support. I guess it comes with the territory in specialized IT skills.

While in the UK it was actually nice to have so much Vacation time. The problem I had was figuring out how to use it all. which I never really did.

So what are you doing for Vacation?