If you have never seen The Holiday, here’s a quick recap (don’t worry—no spoilers.) Two women with men-problems, one in Los Angeles (Cameron Diaz) and another in London (Kate Winslet), decide to change up their lives by swapping homes for the holiday and end up gaining a new perspective on life.
What’s the connection to HR? The movie popped into my head when I read about a house swap between two LinkedIn® employees, except the coworkers took it a step farther and swapped jobs as well (and there were no men-problems, of course).
Two LinkedIn employees, Rich, a senior director of finance based in Mountain View, California, and Sharon, an international finance director based in Dublin, Ireland, agreed to swap houses, cars, and jobs for a month, taking their families along for the international experience.
“I came up with this idea while having a conversation with Rich on how we globalize at LinkedIn,” says Sharon. “[B]oth of our roles depend on us having relationships with teams all over the world. Working in each others’ offices and with each others’ teams would help us be more effective in our roles. Most importantly, this idea fit perfectly with the company culture of transforming ourselves and the company.”
The blog post includes both employees’ perspectives of the summer experience, including the months of preparation leading up to the big swap, along with their takeaways.
Similar to The Holiday, both admit that the swap has changed their perspective. For Rich, his “perspective has become much more global” while Sharon says she has “a new sense of perspective of not only the technical role, but the leadership role that someone else plays.”
You can read the blog post on LinkedIn.