Holiday hoarding: are you taking all of your annual leave?

Irish Examiner

17-06-2025

Hoarding is harrowing. For visual artist Andy Warhol, it was time capsules. 600 of them.
Stuffed with half a million items - one of which was pizza crust. For film-maker Stanley Kubrick, it was thousands of boxes, chock-full of career remnants.
Intriguingly, both capsules and boxes were meticulously dated by the avid gatherers - punctilious pinpricks of discipline amid a clutter of accumulated excess.
As for what drives a hoarding mentality, the Mayo Clinic website throws light on the topic, namely that 'hoarding individuals have a greater prevalence of personality disorders, especially schizotypal, dependent, avoidant, and obsessive-compulsive.'
While that's interesting, it doesn't apply to holiday hoarding. It doesn't explain why increasingly, workers are holding on to paid leave.
Not taking it, so they've nothing to show for it, except perhaps a collection of travel bags that never travel, and a nagging feeling of burn-out.
According to the latest FRS Recruitment Annual Leave Report, 42 per cent of employees polled did not use up all of their annual leave the previous year. Of those, a substantial 19 per cent left five days or more untaken.
It might be tempting to conclude that workers forfeit paid leave because they love their jobs too much to stay away. But this is unlikely.
Published in April, Gallup's State of the Global Workplace 2025 report found that 20 percent of employees felt lonely at work, with 41 per cent experiencing 'significant stress' there.
Naturally, when workers aren't thriving, business struggles: American Journal of Preventive Medicine research published in April, indicated that employee disengagement/burnout resulted in $5.04 million in costs over the course of one year.
Caroline Reidy is managing director at The HR Suite.
Caroline Reidy is managing director at The HR Suite. She's also an expert in employment law. When we talk, she acknowledges that employees who hoard holidays are unlikely to go on the record to admit that.
As for employers, she says: 'Since it's illegal, I can't imagine any admitting to allowing the practice.'
Asked about the thinking that's behind holiday hoarding, she replies: 'Two things: A perception of 'I'm so busy, so how could I manage to take holidays, then come back to a huge build up of work afterwards?'
Also, a culture in which people want to be seen putting work before work-life balance.'
What about bullying? 'Absolutely,' she replies. 'If somebody feels they are being bullied, intimidated or put under pressure in the workplace, they may think asking to take some leave will be made into a big deal.
'I've come across scenarios where people say: 'I don't feel I can ask for even a day off, because when I did before, it was questioned so much, and such a big deal was made of it and I was asked what was I really going to be doing on the requested day off.'
'This happens, whereas it should of course, be the case, that in line with normal company policy, a person can apply for their time off and know it will be approved.'
She believes that both holiday and protective leave must be respected: 'Because employees are entitled to this time off, we need to put good safeguards around it. Usually organisations have good policies but it's down to the immediate manager and to HR to make sure that the culture is there to support people to be off when they are rostered to be off.'
Should managing directors and HR people be policing holiday leave, to ensure workers and taking it and that, except in the case of emergency, they are not being contacted with work queries during that time?
'Management can see if people are taking holidays, but what they can't see is whether they are being contacted by work while they're off.
'For this reason, employees need to be flagged and informed that management expects that everybody is taking their holidays and that they are being allowed to do so undisturbed. And that if this is not their experience, then employees should let HR or management know.
'This extra policing layer is important,' she says.
When asked if holiday hoarding is more prevalent in large or small organisations, Catherine replies that it's more the culture of the organisation than the size, and the nature of the manager the worker reports to day-to-day.
'Holiday hoarding is mostly an issue in white collar jobs,' she says. 'Retail workers are likely to get their time off and be permitted to completely switch off when they do.'
She's absolutely right, and the worker experience at O'Keefe's artisan food shop, which dates back to 1899, is a case in point. Donal O'Keefe was just 14 years of age when his parents bought that shop and he moved into its premises at Wellington Road, Cork.
'Here, there's never any difficulty with staff taking holidays,' he says. 'Time away is important. A two week break is better than one week.'
Was this wisdom passed down to him by his parents?
'It was,' he replies. 'At one point, there were three generations of us working here in the shop. Unfortunately, my mother and grandmother have since passed. But I was taught early on that staff need time off to rest. I learned that from my mother.'
Clearly, O'Keefe's is a great place to work. As staff member, Catherine O'Riordan, says: 'Our boss, Donal, is very good to us all. If we need to get off for something or we are going on holiday, we have no bother whatsoever getting time off in here. Everybody covers for everybody else. Like a few others, I'm 20-odd years working here, and I can tell you that here in this business, it's like we are all family.'
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