According to experts, employees are increasingly choosing employers who offer sabbaticals to combat burnout, gain new experiences and improve work-life balance.
More than half of managers (53%) said their organisation offered sabbatical leave, while just over a quarter (29%) said their organisation did not, according to exclusive data from the Chartered Management Institute. Managers working in the public or charity sectors were more likely to say sabbatical leave was available than those in the private sector (62% versus 44%).
Sabbaticals were popular with both employees and employers because they offered benefits to both, said Anthony Painter, policy director at the Chartered Management Institute.
“In today’s competitive labor market, companies are redoubling their efforts to increase employee retention,” he said. “They can strike the right balance between employee well-being and employee upskilling, which benefits the employer. The relationship between employer and employee has changed in recent years, but it is not zero-sum.”
The research also found that younger managers, under the age of 55, were more likely to say they think it is important for employers to offer sabbatical leave (80% compared to 72%).
Two-fifths of managers said the main reason for offering sabbatical leave was to improve employee wellbeing and mental health, while 36% wanted to create a more flexible working environment and increase talent retention (31%).
Recent research by Harvard Business Review shows that sabbaticals grew exponentiallywhile Adecco, the world’s largest HR company, identified them as one of the top five trends in the workplace.
Shasa Dobrow, associate professor of management at the London School of Economics, said that in recent years there have been “major shifts in how we understand work and where it fits into our lives”. This has led to people being less likely to prioritise pay and instead focusing on “what’s meaningful to them”, from the values the organisation espouses to the working environment.
“Organizations that offer attractive sabbatical options clearly signal to both prospective and current employees that they value the well-being of their employees and access to important development opportunities,” she said.
Sabbaticals are attractive to employers because they increase job satisfaction and reduce staff turnover, she said her research had found that as people progressed in their jobs, their satisfaction decreased. When they changed jobs and started in a new organization, it increased, then decreased again.
“What’s interesting is that there are ways to mimic this effect without actually changing organizations — or even jobs — and that’s by doing things like sabbaticals. We think it’s the spark of novelty and change that comes from activities like sabbaticals that can help people experience a boost in their job satisfaction,” she said.
Alan Greef, a The NHS theatre service manager at County Hospital Louth said his hospital had been running sabbaticals since 1952, when they were introduced to improve staff retention and wellbeing, but he noted they were “becoming increasingly popular”.
To qualify, senior staff had to have five years of service and junior staff about a year, and they were often deployed to Doctors Without Borders or Mercy Ships, he said. One colleague spent three months each year unpaid in the Falklands, administering anaesthesia to locals.
According to HR consultant Al Mayeeda Kinnory, in her experience, around 15-25% of employees take up sabbatical leave when offered. However, this depends on the sector and company culture, with uptake being higher in progressive sectors such as technology or creative industries.
The organisations she advises typically offer sabbaticals of three to six months, available to employees after five to ten years of continuous employment. In some cases they are paid, possibly partially, in others unpaid, and this can depend on the purpose of the leave, for example whether it is for further training or community work.
She said this reflected the fact that HR strategies were increasingly focused on fostering a “supportive and progressive workplace culture that values and prioritises employee wellbeing and work-life balance”. Employees often returned with “renewed energy and a fresh perspective, which also helps to revitalise the mood for further work”, she said.
Kinnory also took advantage of a sabbatical from her previous employer, taking two months of partially paid time off to recover from the stress, travel and volunteer work.
“Knowing that the company valued my well-being and supported my personal and professional growth made me more committed to staying and focusing on my career path,” she said, adding: “If I were to consider new employment opportunities, the availability of a sabbatical offer would be a crucial factor.”