Phenomenon that reveals structural tensions in remote or hybrid work, the so-called quiet vacationing It starts silently: the professional appears online in work tools, responds to messages and participates in meetings. In practice, however, he is somewhere else — and he hasn’t warned anyone.
A direct byproduct of the post-pandemic work culture, this trend — called “silent vacations” in Brazil — allows people to take informal time off and rest or travel, without deducting these days from their vacation balance, maintaining only the appearance of presence.
The term gained traction in mid-2024, after the American company Harris Poll released a behavioral survey in which it revealed that around 28% of workers (and 37% of millennials) had already adopted the practice. Behind the strategy, according to the research, there is the fear of appearing disengaged in an unstable job market.
In other words, the phenomenon is not related to trickery, but to the need to create a possible break within an environment. Rest happens — because the employee is overworked — but it needs to be disguised to be accepted.
Although questionable, the behavior exposes a contradiction in the current corporate world: behind a discourse of balance between personal and professional life, many organizational cultures still value constant availability. This creates an environment where rest requires negotiation — or concealment.
I know quiet vacationing seeks to circumvent a system in which online presence continues to be valued more than delivery, its consequences vary depending on geography. In the United States, the worker negotiates with the company a bank of paid days off — called PTO —, which, in most states, expires if not used by the end of the year.
Without legislation that guarantees the right to paid vacation, only 48% of Americans fully use this bank. This means that silent vacations end up hurting employees. To simulate digital presence, they take half a break and still see their time off expire at the end of the year. No real rest, no rights preserved.
In Brazil, this logic changes. For the CLT worker, the quiet vacationing does not represent financial loss. On the contrary, as granting vacations is the company’s prerogative, any labor liabilities due to non-compliance with the legal deadline fall entirely on the employer.
The motivation here, therefore, is purely cultural: to circumvent the system for micro-leakage. In other words, short breaks that the employee is afraid to officially request, fearing judgments about the time chosen to be absent or the feeling that it will harm the team.
. Without the protection of the CLT, stopping working could mean losing income or even clients. Therefore, many turn to quiet vacationing: they rest in silence so as not to expose their absence and avoid financial loss, or even the cancellation of contracts.
Unrestricted dedication: a work that never ends
Behind this trend is a culture of permanent availability — driven by long working hours and the constant connectivity of the digital environment. , and the boundary between personal and professional life becomes increasingly difficult to preserve.
In this context, asking for a vacation can generate anxiety. Research indicates that 61% of workers believe that staying connected is a sign of dedication — which makes formal rest a symbolic risk to one’s career. Therefore, the solution found is informal: hidden days off, to avoid judgments that an official absence could provoke.
The tools that became popular with remote work — such as Slack, Teams and corporate WhatsApp — end up facilitating this behavior. They allow quick and superficial responses, capable of sustaining a semblance of activity — even with the professional away from work.
The result is paradoxical: seeking to rest without disconnecting, many end up prolonging their tiredness. Interrupted by notifications and interactions, even if minimal, rest becomes fragmented and rarely fulfills its function of physical and mental recovery.
With so many people willing to cheat the system, the question that arises is: is the need for “clandestine vacations” an employee problem or a consequence of a corporate culture that, nowadays, still sees rest as a privilege and unrestricted availability as a virtue?
