As employees seek work/life balance, the sabbatical returns

After years of hop­ping on planes to Den­mark every week as an exec­u­tive direc­tor for Leo Phar­ma, Mike Hinchy decid­ed to hit pause on his career and take a sab­bat­i­cal. 

“You don’t often get a chance to take more than a two-week hol­i­day, so this seemed like a great oppor­tu­ni­ty to reflect and focus on my own well­be­ing and fam­i­ly,” Hinchy says. “It sounds obvi­ous, but the pan­dem­ic has prompt­ed me to recon­sid­er my pri­or­i­ties and where I invest my time and emo­tion.” 

Hinchy is far from alone. Covid-19 prompt­ed many of us to reassess our work com­mit­ments, with employ­ees increas­ing­ly pri­ori­tis­ing work/life bal­ance over career pro­gres­sion. 

A third of UK work­ers inter­viewed for Totaljobs Hir­ing Trends Index val­ued work/life bal­ance high­ly when look­ing for a new job. It was sec­ond only to high­er salaries in terms of employ­ee pri­or­i­ties. 

Julie Gaskell is head of part­ner­ships for events com­pa­ny Wild in Art and a for­mer CEO. She’s  also opt­ed to take a break from the world of work. Accord­ing to Gaskell, the pan­dem­ic has been a very iso­lat­ing expe­ri­ence, espe­cial­ly for sin­gle peo­ple. With trav­el restric­tions lift­ing again, she feels it’s the right time for a six-month trip across Amer­i­ca and Europe. 

“I’ve had a good career, but a lot of the dri­ve has dis­ap­peared over the last few years,” Gaskell says. “It felt like the right time to try some­thing dif­fer­ent and shake my life up a bit. Luck­i­ly I’ve got an employ­er who sees the ben­e­fits I can bring the busi­ness by explor­ing more of the world while on sab­bat­i­cal.” 

Growing demand 

In today’s com­pet­i­tive job mar­ket, many com­pa­nies are renew­ing their efforts to improve staff reten­tion. With employ­ees increas­ing­ly demand­ing addi­tion­al flex­i­bil­i­ty in their work life, sab­bat­i­cals are grow­ing in pop­u­lar­i­ty.  

“Fol­low­ing the work­ing sit­u­a­tion dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, peo­ple are think­ing quite dif­fer­ent­ly about their careers and the impor­tance of work/life bal­ance,” says Claire McCart­ney, resourc­ing and inclu­sion pol­i­cy advi­sor for the Char­tered Insti­tute of Pro­fes­sion­al Devel­op­ment. “So it makes sense to me that employ­ers are intro­duc­ing sab­bat­i­cals as a way of sup­port­ing peo­ple in this.”  

Ear­li­er this month, Mon­zo announced that it will offer all employ­ees a three-month paid sab­bat­i­cal after they’ve worked at the online bank for four years. Accord­ing to its peo­ple expe­ri­ence direc­tor Tara Ryan, the aim is to allow employ­ees to take time out to trav­el, spend time with fam­i­lies and focus on them­selves, with­out hav­ing to leave the com­pa­ny or sac­ri­fice pay.  

“We’re always look­ing to intro­duce best-in-class poli­cies for our employ­ees,” Ryan says. “Our aim is to not only rein­vent bank­ing for cus­tomers… but to shake up and vast­ly improve the expe­ri­ence for employ­ees work­ing with­in it.” 

Glob­al iden­ti­ty ver­i­fi­ca­tion com­pa­ny Ver­iff intro­duced its own sab­bat­i­cal pol­i­cy this month and will now offer staff in its Euro­pean and US offices six weeks of ful­ly paid time off for every three years of ser­vice.  

“We believe that in order to live a ful­fill­ing and impact­ful life, our employ­ees could ben­e­fit from longer breaks every once in a while,” says Piret Saag, Veriff’s head of learn­ing and employ­ee expe­ri­ence.  “The past cou­ple of years have been full of chal­lenges for our glob­al team, both pro­fes­sion­al­ly and per­son­al­ly, which is why we hope sab­bat­i­cals encour­age them to ful­ly switch off, recharge, and come back well-rest­ed and with new per­spec­tives.”  

The change in pol­i­cy comes off the back of a suc­cess­ful year for the busi­ness, which achieved uni­corn sta­tus in Jan­u­ary, mean­ing it is val­ued at more than $1 bil­lion. The addi­tion­al time off is seen as a token of appre­ci­a­tion for those who have been with the com­pa­ny dur­ing this peri­od of growth and an entic­ing ben­e­fit as the busi­ness engages in a new round of recruit­ment. 

“With our sab­bat­i­cal pro­gramme, we want to give our employ­ees a chance to step back from their role at Ver­iff and focus on their per­son­al enrich­ment, as well as con­sid­er new angles for pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment,” Saag adds. “We hope this serves as a great ben­e­fit for peo­ple look­ing to join Ver­iff as well as those seek­ing new oppor­tu­ni­ties with­in the com­pa­ny.” 

Handling sabbatical requests 

There are a range of rea­sons that peo­ple could decide to take a sab­bat­i­cal, many of which may part­ly stem from the pan­dem­ic. For some, expe­ri­ences of stress and burnout may influ­ence their deci­sion to take a break, while those with fam­i­ly liv­ing abroad might have been unable to spend sig­nif­i­cant time with them while trav­el restric­tions were in place.  

For Hinchy, the mun­dan­i­ty of work­ing from home played a part in his deci­sion. “Being on calls all day at a desk and not mov­ing has def­i­nite­ly neg­a­tive­ly impact­ed me – I feel like I’ve aged over the last cou­ple of years. In my mind, there must be a bet­ter way to bal­ance out life and work, rather than being stuck at a desk for 10 hours a day on a vari­ety of meet­ings and calls.” 

Com­pa­nies that ignore employ­ee requests for greater flex­i­bil­i­ty risk an exo­dus of tal­ent. After what Hinchy describes as six hap­py years at LEO Phar­ma, he opt­ed to leave the com­pa­ny before tak­ing a sab­bat­i­cal. “I’ve had a 22-year career in the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal indus­try, so not know­ing what that next job is or where the next pay cheque is com­ing from is a new expe­ri­ence for me,” he says. 

A spokesper­son for Leo Phar­ma UK says that the busi­ness is “lean and agile, mak­ing it a chal­lenge to offer a stan­dard sab­bat­i­cal offer­ing while main­tain­ing busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity”. How­ev­er they add that the com­pa­ny is open to con­sid­er­ing requests from employ­ees on a case-by-case basis and fre­quent­ly adapts work­ing arrange­ments “to meet indi­vid­ual needs”.

Hinchy would like to see more employ­ers fol­low the lead of busi­ness­es like Mon­zo and Ver­iff in offer­ing loy­al staff addi­tion­al time off. “If you’re look­ing for peo­ple to invest a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of their career at a sin­gle com­pa­ny, the oppor­tu­ni­ty to have a sab­bat­i­cal and time to reflect every few years could be a very clever thing for employ­ers to offer,” he says. “If it isn’t offered, peo­ple may just do it any­way, which would mean you end up los­ing tal­ent from the busi­ness.” 

Assessing priorities 

While it may sound sim­ple to intro­duce a sab­bat­i­cal pol­i­cy, there are impor­tant con­sid­er­a­tions for HR depart­ments. “It’s real­ly impor­tant to have a clear pol­i­cy in place and to think through all of the poten­tial impli­ca­tions,” McCart­ney says.   

First will be eli­gi­bil­i­ty cri­te­ria. Will it depend on length of ser­vice or senior­i­ty? With peo­ple tak­ing addi­tion­al time off, the lev­el of dis­rup­tion for the busi­ness will also need to be explored. 

Per­haps most impor­tant­ly, busi­ness­es will need to decide whether the sab­bat­i­cal is paid or unpaid. 

This deci­sion could have con­se­quences for people’s con­tracts, McCart­ney explains. “If it’s unpaid organ­i­sa­tions would need to clar­i­fy that the employ­ee will be able to return to the busi­ness in the same posi­tion, as stop­ping and restart­ing their con­tract would have an impact for the employ­ee, in terms of their con­tin­u­a­tion of ser­vice.” 

With more employ­ees seek­ing a bet­ter work/life bal­ance, intro­duc­ing a sab­bat­i­cal pol­i­cy could boost staff loy­al­ty and reten­tion. Like many work­ers, Hinchy now believes that work should fit around his com­mit­ments to friends and fam­i­ly life, rather than the oth­er way around. “When I fin­ish my sab­bat­i­cal and find a job again, I’ll have a bet­ter sense of my pri­or­i­ties and how I want to be spend­ing my time,” he says. “And it prob­a­bly won’t involve being in the air­port mul­ti­ple hours every week­end.”