The ROI of Taking Your PTO and Mental Health Days

Why do PR professionals refuse to take their paid time off?

Driven by a toxic fear of optics and the expectation of 24/7 client availability, a staggering 80% of public relations professionals fail to use their earned paid time off, directly suffocating their physical health. Executives must fundamentally shift agency culture by viewing PTO as untouchable total compensation, pre-scheduling annual vacations, and normalizing the use of sick days for immediate mental rest.

I am imploring you, my fellow public relations professionals, to take time away from work and make it your number one priority in 2020. This is in our control and desperately needed if we are to continue to advance the public relations profession and professional.

According to research from the U.S. Travel Association, “more than half of Americans (55%) are still not using all their paid time off…In 2018, American workers failed to use 768 million days of PTO—a 9% increase from 2017.”

Looking closer at public relations, I am working in conjunction with Elizabeth Candello, Ph.D., Integrated Strategic Communication Professor, Washington State University Vancouver, on a health and wellness study in our industry. One of the areas of interest is in how many people in our profession take all their paid time off and sick time. Only 20 percent of respondents said they took all their earned paid time off and sick time.

Several factors may lead to this issue.

• We’re too busy to prioritize ourselves.

• We forget to take time off.

• We are afraid of optics.

• We are afraid of what our bosses might think.

• We don’t trust our teams enough to leave them on their own.

• Our manager won’t approve the time off.

• Our clients won’t understand and expect us to be available 24/7.

• We think that mental sick days don’t count (NOTE: they do!).

I witnessed these perceptions a lot throughout my career. Colleagues who are overworked and not prioritizing themselves don’t take time off. Then the end of the year comes, they realize they have a lot of unused vacation time they have to take and are unable to do so. Not taking our deserved time off impacts our physical and mental health, both of which are essential to reduce stress and thrive in our profession.

How do we solve this? It won’t happen overnight, but I have three ideas that are within our control today.

1) Shift our mindset. We are being paid not to work. We have earned this benefit along with our salary, health insurance and other perks that are included. This is a part of our total compensation.

2) Schedule your PTO for the next 12 months NOW. I used to do this when I was in the agency world, and although it seems a little strange, it helps you down the road to ensure you’re taking a vacation. Of course, things may come up that require you to move your time off out or up a week, however, I’ve found that is the exception and not the norm.

3) Taking a mental sick day counts! We need to change the way we think about sick days. No longer should they include physical health. We need to think about taking dedicated time to rest our brains!

My final ask is to please make your health and wellness a priority this year. We must be mentally and physically strong to live through our profession. That starts with being proactive and prescriptive with our time away. Plan this now before the year runs away.