Companies are increasingly recognizing the need for long-term workers to take a sabbatical, both to re-energize and to recommit to their jobs.
Feeling a little burned out today? We have a suggestion. Ask your boss for a year off …. with pay.
It’s not as far-fetched as it sounds. A few years back, a story out of Australia told of an employment custom there called the “decennial.” After 10 years with a company, employees could take a full year off with pay, and be guaranteed return to the job.
Though the idea sounds at first like a financial disaster plan, there was a measure of shrewdness behind it. Studies showed the average long-term worker stayed with a company some 7 years. Then all that experience walked out the door.
Offering the decennial enticed top people to stay three extra years until they could get the perk, and when they returned, to be both grateful and recommitted to the organization.
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Meanwhile, when the leave-takers were gone, up-and-comers got needed experience in top jobs. The decennial, or as we call it in this country, the sabbatical, was a breath of fresh air throughout the organization.
Such an idea could never take hold here in the Land of the Bottom Line, right?
Even Mainline Organizations Picking Up the Trend
Well, surprisingly, it has. A recent report by CNN Money.com shows 11 percent of large corporations offer some sort of paid sabbatical plan, and another 29 percent offer unpaid extended time off. What’s more, the idea is growing. Five years ago, the total number of companies offering sabbaticals of any kind was only 15 percent.
What kinds of organizations offer the plans? Sabbaticals have long been a staple in the educational community, and other groups, such as publishers and software makers, that also deal mostly with intellectual processes. But now mainline organizations, and even manufacturers, are picking up the trend.
American Express offers its 10-year veterans between 1 and 6 months’ paid leave. Accounting firm, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, offers from 3 to 6 months, at 20 percent to 40 percent pay, with most benefits continued, if leave-takers promise to remain at the firm at least a year after their return. And even Proctor and Gamble offers a 12-week sabbatical. The leave is unpaid, but you only need to work there a year to qualify.
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Sabbaticals typically fall into two categories: The unrestricted sabbatical allows employees to do anything they want. The public service sabbatical requires the worker to volunteer to teach or carry out other public or charitable service. The latter offers the company significant public relations benefits, even as it gives the worker a break from routine.
What factors should be considered if your organization wants to go the sabbatical route? Here’s a list of questions to consider, partially drawn by ideas from the columnist “HR Guy” at Vault.com.
–Paid or unpaid? Unpaid sabbaticals have obvious financial attractions, but may also fail to re-energize workers if very few can afford to take them. A compromise may be partial pay. A second alternative is to require the attachment of paid vacation to the sabbatical, creating a longer time away from work, but one you’d have partially paid for anyway.
–Qualifications needed? The shorter the time required with the company, the more potential applicants there will be. You need to decide at what point burnout occurs, and set the requirement short of that. Your turnover records may help.
–Coverage needed? Consider who will do the leave-taker’s work? As stated, this may be an opportunity for rising stars to gain experience in top jobs. To facilitate smooth operations, require a long lead time for sabbatical requests.
Perhaps the best reason to consider sabbatical programs is that if you don’t allow long-term workers a break, they may take it anyway … on the job. “Employees need to regenerate,” says John Bremen of HR consultant Watson Wyatt Worldwide. “If companies don’t give people the opportunity to do that, they’ll burn out and leave – or worse, they’ll burn out and stay.”