Can taking more holidays make you more productive at work? According to a new study, it's very possible. Done by Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman, the study came about when they found difficulty in coordinating a summer meeting with an Amsterdam-based company because many of their important executives were on holiday.

They asked the company's VP of human resources how their business was able to operate so efficiently, to which he responded:

I am confident that because of the rest and break from work that our European executives get more accomplished in their working days than those in the U.S. who burn themselves out.

They decided to do a study on this and came out with some interesting results.

Data was taken from 2,310 respondents from 20 different countries with the most paid vacation days a year. Australia had an average of 28 days a year per employee, Sweden and Brazil had 41 days a year, while the U.S. only had 10.

They found that leaders in countries with more paid vacation tested higher in speed, focus quality and impatience.

In other words, those who took more vacation time, had things under control, were not as frantic, and were generally more efficient than those who didn't.

So if you're an employer, you might want to rethink about employee perks, after all quality is better than quantity.