How to Negotiate for More Vacation Time

If your company is typical, you get just a few short weeks of vacation a year. Here's how to wrangle for more.

Difficulty: Moderately challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Pens
• Spiral Notebooks
• Pens

1. Choose an appropriate time to ask for more vacation. The best time is usually during a solid performance review, but other choice times include the end of a profitable fiscal year, after a successful presentation or simply when you find your manager in a good mood.

2. Make sure you're able to give your manager a good reason why you need more vacation time.

3. Prepare a list of reasons why you feel you deserve to be rewarded this way. Perhaps you put in extra hours on a weekly basis, or you just saved the company a lot of money on a large purchase.

4. Decide what you're willing to give up in order to get more vacation time. This may mean sacrificing some or all of your upcoming raise or agreeing to work an extra half-hour each day, for example.

5. Make sure to point out any benefits your employer will realize from this arrangement. These reasons may include greater employee job satisfaction, or a way for your employer to keep payroll increases down.

Tips & Warnings

• Be willing to bend. Agreeing not to take three weeks off in a row or agreeing to split up vacation time in some other manner may help your case.
• Ask for what you want, but don't demand. You may risk offending the boss.

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on 11/22/2005 Sometimes managers are more willing to explore the possibilities of more vacation time or salary hikes. This doesn't mean your request gets put on the back burner - quite the opposite. This means you and your manager will immediately discuss your request, with your manager coming up with some of the ideas as to how to make it work.

A sample exchange might start with you asking for and explaining why you need more vacation or money. Then, you might ask your manager, "What are the different ways we could explore that would make this work out?" or "Do you see ways that you might look at the budget to help me work this out?"

on 11/22/2005 If it is refused there likely are good reasons and you will be told (if not, ask for elaboration). If so, try to keep the door open by asking to revisit the issue and try to get a time frame commitment. Have a list of items to barter in exchange, e.g., take on extra project, modify your performance goals, etc. Above all, be prepared to be turned down and be gracious about it. Yours is not the only position or circumstance to be considered.