Work-life balance has less to do with working fewer hours per week, than with having sufficient number of vacation days in the year. America is the only country that has zero guaranteed vacation days. Every single developed country has typically 25-30, except for Japan and South Korea, which have slightly fewer. I know from long experience in western Europe that even though they have 4 weeks of vacation guaranteed by EU law, at least the countries north of the Alps work long hours with frequent overtime. They go by the motto "work hard, play hard". It seems in America, at least from the stats I've seen, that white collar workers waste a LOT of time in the office. In my opinion it is to be expected. If you can't take enough vacation and let your body and mind relax sufficiently, your work will suffer, and your body will "check out" one way or another, either through day dreaming or illness. Then, if you start to slack off from exhaustion, you get fired for "underperforming". While Americans will be quick to mock the rest of the world for being "lazy", the fact is that US government employees and military have gotten 30 days of vacation since forever (isn't that just evil "socialism"?). Why is so much vacation OK for them, but the rest of America is supposed to suffer with little or none?
en.wikipedia.org
Yes, lets talk about Paid Time Off (PTO) and vacation days as a starting point. What is Paid Time Off / Vacation?
IMO, it is a fringe benefit given by an employer to an employee which guarantees full pay to an employee when they work less than x hrs. in a given work week or x hours bi-weekly if that timeframe is desired by the employer for greater flexibility of the employees.
For argument sake, lets say the company operates on Sunday to Saturyday 40 hr weekly full time assumption and PTO vs comp time is assessed each week and then reset the following week.
If you are a salaried employee, and you need put in to take off 2 hrs on a Thursday afternoon (for whatever) and you only had to work 38hrs that week, then the employee should charge 2 hrs of their PTO balance in orde to get full pay.
Lets say Friday morning after taking off early on Thursday afternoon, the boss asked for an unforeseen ad-hoc request with a deadline of Monday morning 8am and the employee had to work 2 hours extra either Friday evening or on Saturday monring to take care of it. Now that employee ended up having to work 40hrs for that week and no Paid Time Off fringe benefit by the employee should be required to be taken as they provided their 40 hours of work to the company for that week.
So this is where employers can really exploit this fringe benefit to employees while still making the company look like good guys/gals. The supervisors can project the image of "if something comes up during the normal working hours, I'm very understanding and caring and give people this flexibility to leave work and take care of their life issues, if they need a mental break (whatever reason). But if that employee is constantly having to work greater than 40 hrs a week just to "escape" for 2 hrs. on a Thursday, then there really is no Paid Time Off. The only fringe benefit is the flexibility to work flexible hours.
That brings back to the need for clear definition that Vacation, Sick or PTO is defines as paid time off for when you work less than X hours in a given timeperiod as defined by the company. If not, then its ripe for exploitation.
And another issue....what if when you take time off for a week vacation (assume 40hrs of leave and not working on vacation) and no one covers your workload, but your supervisor and/or clients still expect deadlines to be achieved for the week that you are away and week you return without delays? Well if its "on you" then you are probably working 60-80hrs the week before and perhaps the week after your vacation just to give yourself ability to take off for 5 days in a row without having to work. But most people in this situation will do some bare-minimum work while on their vacation, just to avoid the stress of returning to work to see if they can pull of the deadlines in time while also working 60-80hrs to get it done.
And for those hourly employees (that would get 1.5x pay over 40 hrs of work in a week) IMO, if you get a PTO fringe benefit by an employer then any PTO hours charged that week should count towards your 40 and any hrs in total beyond 40 hrs you should count as 1.5x pay or you don't have to use your PTO hours that week (let employee choose).
Example: You are approved to go to the dentist on a Wednesday. You plan to charge 2 hrs. of your PTO balance to go to the dentist. On Friday morning, boss says we have a shipment coming in Friday afternoon, and need you to stay extra to unload the truck, so you work 2 additional hours on Friday unanticipated. You worked 40 hrs that week in total now, so you should either be allowed to not charge those 2 PTO hours against your balance or you should get 2 hours of 1.5x pay...one or the other.
