Rush hour traffic has been flowing faster the last few days. A lot of office desks are empty.</p><p>It&#x92;s the usual end-of-the-year pattern in many workplaces: Employees are taking off extra time around the holiday or are cramming in their unused vacation time.</p><p>Especially in organizations that have use-it-or-lose-it time-off policies, there&#x92;s typically a dip in attendance the last two weeks of the year.</p><p>It&#x92;s also the cold and flu season. And don&#x92;t discount the weather, which sometimes disrupts the best-intentioned travel plans to make it back to work.</p><p>In short, there are many reasons for missing co-workers in late December.</p><p>Even so, a snapshot survey by Right Management found that most U.S. workers didn&#x92;t take all the time off they had coming to them this year.</p><p>The workforce consulting firm said up to 70 percent of employees are leaving some paid time off on the table in 2011.</p><p>The results mirrored what Right found in a similar 2009 survey. In that year, two-thirds of the workers said they didn&#x92;t take all the vacation time due them.</p><p>Although a strong work ethic has an upside, it shouldn&#x92;t come at the expense of work/life balance, according to Michael Haid, a senior vice president at Right.</p><p>&#x93;The perceived workplace culture that prevails at many organizations seems to recognize devotion to the job to the exclusion of almost all else,&#x94; Haid said. &#x93;Whether this culture is real or imagined, employees everywhere are forsaking vacations and even family time for the primacy of work.&#x94;</p><p>And that&#x92;s not a good thing, mental and physical health experts agree. Stress hurts.</p><p>&#x93;We know from ongoing research that there&#x92;s a lot of stress in the workplace,&#x94; Haid said. &#x93;Staffing is lean, workloads are heavier, job security uncertain and the job market is weak.&#x94;</p><p>But don&#x92;t lose sight of the fact that vacation is an earned benefit, he noted. It&#x92;s part of most workplace&#x92;s compensation structure.</p><p>Management consultants often find that in workplaces where employees say they &#x93;can&#x92;t&#x94; take time off, there are problems. Those include higher staff turnover rates, higher absenteeism and more safety or health claims, as well as low morale.</p><p>Reading this at work? Maybe you can slip out early if you still have time off due you.</p><p>Reading this at home? Enjoy the day off. You probably earned it.