Time out
Many companies are exploring an increasingly attractive benefit for employees: paid and unpaid sabbaticals
For companies to reap the full benefit of sabbaticals, they need some sort of process for capturing the learning. "If you don't have something formal, no one else sees the results and it won't encourage future sabbaticals," says Nancy Ahlrichs Raichart, president of EOC Strategies, a human resources consulting firm in Carmel, Ind. At footwear and apparel maker Timberland, which awards four six-month paid public-service leaves a year, employees present a final report on the project to the CEO and share their learning with staff through E-mail reports, speeches, and other avenues. At Wells Fargo, which grants paid volunteer leave of up to four months, employees fill out two assessments--one halfway through the experience and one afterward. The nonprofits are also asked to weigh in.
While social service sabbaticals are often a plum assignment for a chosen few, some companies give all employees a paid break as a reward for long service. Intel employees can take a two-month sabbatical every seven years, for example, while Russell Investment Group of Tacoma, Wash., gives employees eight weeks after 10 years. Even some small companies award time off. Abacus Planning Group of Columbia, S.C., gives its 12 employees a monthlong, paid sabbatical every five years. "Giving employees the chance to refresh themselves seemed like the perfect way to reward loyalty and make sure people stayed," says Cheryl Holland, founder and president of Abacus.
When her employees return from their month off, Holland says, she sees a real difference. "They look refreshed, they're more engaged, and it makes them more confident about their job." One employee used her time for her wedding and honeymoon. Another traveled in Europe and then caught up on house projects. Holland hopes to spend her own long-overdue sabbatical hiking with her 10-year-old daughter this spring.
While Europeans, with their long vacations, might scoff at the idea of a one-month sabbatical, it's a generous benefit for a small firm like Holland's. Only 2 percent of firms with fewer than 100 employees offer paid sabbaticals, compared with 8 percent of firms with more than 500 employees.
See ya. Instituting a sabbatical policy is not without challenges. There's always the risk that employees will use the time to hunt for a new job. Holland's client service administrator, for instance, returned from sabbatical only to announce she'd decided to pursue her dream of counseling women in need. Inconvenient as the occasional departure may be, Holland believes such soul-searching helps the firm in the long run. "If you're not happy, you're not performing well," she says.
There's also the practical challenge of replacing the employees on sabbatical. Holland requests that people in the same department stagger their leaves and that employees provide at least six weeks' notice of stints. Careful coverage planning is also a high priority at Intel, where 4,063 workers took sabbaticals last year and where employees may be gone as long as three months at a time (Intel's sabbatical is eight weeks, but workers can tack on three to four vacation weeks). Until last year, workers had to take their leave during the 12 months after their seventh anniversary. But a surge of hiring in the late 1990s threatened to create a flood of sabbaticals this year, so the company now gives workers three years to take their leave. Employees work closely with managers to create a coverage plan. Meanwhile, managers view sabbaticals as valuable cross-training opportunities that can help the employees who act as temporary replacements gain the skills they need to move up within Intel.
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