What Timetastic’s 1.2 million bookings reveal about burnout and wellbeing
In the first half of 2025, Timetastic users booked 1,199,202 days off.
That’s a lot of birthdays, duvet days, and trips to the sunshine (or snow).
The interesting bit? When you dig into the data, you don’t just see who’s booking time off – you also see who isn’t. And that’s when the red flags start flying to show burnout.
Because it turns out, a surprising number of people are going months (even nearly a whole year) without a single break. And in a small business, you really can’t afford to miss a problem like that.
Key summary of our findings
- The risks: long gaps without leave
– 1 in 4 people haven’t had a day off in 3 months.
– Some went 300+ days without a single holiday.
→ Jump to the risks - The culture signal
– When a quarter of your team aren’t booking leave, you need to assess your culture.
→ Jump to culture - The positives: wellbeing breaks are on the rise
– Duvet days, wellness leave, and charity days are being used more than ever.
– Not all leave is for a big a holiday.
→ Jump to wellbeing - What employers can do
– Our simple ‘time-off health check’ checklist.
– Spot early warning signs before burnout sneaks up.
→ Jump to checklist
The risks of employees taking long gaps without leave
One in four employees haven’t taken a single day off in 90 days.
After some analysis, we spotted a few worries. Our data shows a big chunk of people aren’t taking breaks at all. And the longer the gap? The bigger the burnout risk.
What did our time off data show us?
- 1 in 4 employees (26.5%) haven’t had a day off in three months.
- 1 in 88 people (1.1%) went without leave for six months.
- 1 in 600 (0.17%) pushed it to nine months without a break.
Then there are the extremes:
- 275 people went 300+ days without time off.
- The longest no-leave streak we saw? 359 days. Nearly a full year of work without stopping.
To put that into perspective for small businesses:
- In a team of 50, about 13 people are likely to have gone three months without a holiday.
- In a team of 100, that’s 26 people.
These numbers represent employees pushing through without rest. It’s often the ‘always-on’ high performers who won’t complain until it’s too late. And that’s exactly how burnout sneaks up on businesses.
Takeaway: Long gaps without leave are a burnout risk in disguise.
When time-off patterns reveal culture problems
If a quarter of your team haven’t taken leave in 90 days, you could have a culture issue.
Our data shows 1 in 4 employees go three months without a holiday. Sure, some people prefer to save their time off. But when that pattern repeats across a number of your workforce, it’s telling you something deeper about your workplace.
- Do people feel like they can’t take time off?
- Are managers leading by example, or powering through without breaks?
- Is workload making it feel ‘impossible’ to book leave?
In small businesses, these signals matter even more. When a few people don’t take leave, the ripple effect hits the whole team: tired staff, rising stress, and sooner or later, productivity that nosedives.
Takeaway: Keep an eye on who’s taking leave when – and who’s not taking leave at all.
The rise of wellbeing leave: Duvet days, wellness breaks, and micro-holidays
Not all leave looks like a big holiday. And that’s a good thing.
Alongside the long gaps, our data also shows something positive: employees are using different types of leave to protect their wellbeing.
Some of the healthiest leave:
- Birthday leave: 3,250 bookings (everyone loves an extra day off 🎉).
- Study leave: 2,299 bookings.
- Wellness/mental health days: 198 bookings.
- Duvet days: 210 bookings.
These are the mini breaks that keep people refreshed. A duvet day to reset, a long weekend to catch up on life admin, or a mental health day to breathe? They all count.
Wellbeing days make a big difference
A slight striking contrast: in the same dataset, only one single ‘burnout day’ was booked. Which shows two things:
- People either don’t feel comfortable calling it burnout, or
- By the time they do, it’s already too late.
That’s why proactive breaks, especially the small ones, are so powerful. They stop burnout from creeping in at all.
Takeaway: Wellbeing days, duvet days, and long weekends are your early defence against burnout.
Employer checklist: How to spot burnout risks and encourage healthy leave
The good news is you can prevent burnout. You don’t need a huge HR overhaul, just a few simple habits to make sure time off is healthy in your team.
Some top tips for spotting risks early and encouraging people to rest:
- If you’ve got Timetastic Pro, check your Burnout Board monthly
- Make it normal to ask, ‘When’s your next break?’
- Celebrate booking leave and encourage it
- Encourage short breaks like odd days or long weekends
- Take days off yourself and fully switch to give the right impression
Want more tips on stopping burnout?
We’ve turned this into a downloadable checklist so you can keep on top of leave.
Burnout is preventable: Key takeaways from Timetastic’s leave data
Our mega data of 1.2 million holiday bookings makes one thing clear: burnout doesn’t arrive suddenly. It builds up quietly in the gaps, in the people who push on without rest, in teams where a quarter haven’t taken leave in months.
The flipside is just as clear: short breaks, duvet days, wellbeing leave really work. They keep people refreshed, keep teams productive, and stop burnout from creeping in.
As an employer, the tools are right there in your leave data. The Burnout Board shows you who hasn’t booked time off, and our checklist gives you a simple playbook for making sure nobody slips through the cracks.
At the end of the day, you’ve got to remember time off isn’t a perk, it’s part of the job.
That’s exactly why we built Timetastic
So that you and your team can book and approve leave at in a few, simple steps. You get visibility of who’s off when and use the Burnout Board to track who’s at risking of burning out.
Ready to see how it works? Start your free Timetastic trial today and put wellbeing at the heart of your business.