Strict PTO culture is forcing employees to participate in 'vacation-maxxing'

• Key Insight: See why workers are strategically pairing their paid time off with weekends and holidays.
• What's at Stake: The performance, retention, and financial losses employers face when workers cannot fully disconnect.
• Expert Quote: "The bigger risk isn't employees taking longer vacations — it's employees who never fully recover." — Star Levandowski, SVP, Deputy.
  Source: Bullets generated by AI with editorial review

A number of employees are being more publicly strategic than ever with their allotted time off and they're calling it "vacation-maxxing." 

"Vacation-maxxing" is the newest viral planning strategy where workers strategically book paid time off around weekends and public holidays to turn a small number of vacation days into massive blocks of consecutive time off. The new trend is more than making the most of their PTO policies — it points to very real and persistent gaps in employee wellness that organizations can prioritize and address.

"Employees have long tried to create greater stretches of uninterrupted time off," said Star Levandowski, SVP of business and people operations at business software company Deputy. "What's different today is why people [want to] do it. In a world of constant connection and being reachable 24/7, employees are looking for long enough stretches of time to truly disconnect and recover."

Read more: Employees aren't taking their time off. Can 'PTO-maxxing' help?

Europeans are currently leading the way in "vacation-maxxing," with France topping the list of most time taken off. Full-time employees there take an average of up to 28 vacation days each year, according to data from workplace insights platform CFO Drive. While Americans are also embracing the trend, workers in the U.S. take significantly less time off, averaging about 16 vacation days annually. Nearly a quarter of American workers didn't take a single vacation day in the past year, according to a FlexJobs report published in October 2025.

The disparity highlights a persistent workplace challenge, Levandowski said, which is that many employees still feel unable to take time off because of workplace culture or company policies. That sentiment is often reinforced by leaders who view using PTO to extend holidays as a way to game the system. In reality, Levandowski said, employees' reluctance to use their vacation time often points to deeper issues, such as burnout, understaffing, or workplace cultures that discourage taking leave.

"The bigger risk isn't employees taking longer vacations," she said. "It's employees who never fully recover. Over time, that will quietly impact individual and team performance, engagement, retention, and ultimately customer experience and business outcomes."

Flexible leave is essential for employee wellness

To foster a healthier workplace that encourages long breaks, organizations don't necessarily need to offer more PTO, Levandowski said, they just need to make it easier for employees to actually use the time they already have. That starts with good operational practices such as predictable scheduling, adequate shift coverage, realistic workloads, cross-training teams, and managers who actively encourage employees to disconnect while they're away. 

If someone spends their entire vacation checking email or worrying about returning to chaos, the policy itself isn't solving the problem, Levandowski said, and the recharge those employees were seeking never actually comes to fruition. As a result, organizations could end up facing high turnover, low engagement, and long-term financial losses tied to low productivity. 

Read more: Not all PTO is created equal: Women may need more specialized leave policies

"The companies that stand out will be the ones where managers normalize taking time off and workloads are planned accordingly," Levandowski said. "Employees [should be able] to truly unplug without worrying about what they're coming back to."

As for how "vacation-maxxing" will affect the future of paid leave, its impact isn't as short-lived as most trends, Levandowski said. The term itself may come and go, but the underlying expectation is here to stay. 

"Ultimately, creating a healthy workplace isn't about encouraging employees to maximize vacation days," Levandowski said. "It's about building an environment where people don't feel like they need a perfectly engineered vacation just to recover from work in the first place."