Everyone Take a Week Off: The Corporate Strategy Fighting Burnout

After months of remote working, the boundaries between work and life have withered away. Though burnout is on the rise, taking time off to recharge doesn’t always work. Some businesses have a unique solution.

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Is annual leave stress-inducing?

Taking time off is notoriously hailed as a way to avoid burnout – which is now classed as an “occupational phenomenon” by the World Health Organisation. But the issue many workers have with annual leave is that is doesn’t always feel like a break. It can induce two types of stress.

The first is that many employees end up working double time before they go, or they have a nightmarish week playing catch up once they’re back. The second type of stress is the corporate version of FOMO (fear of missing out). Only, the fear isn’t missing out on fun, it’s missing out on important emails, immediate requests or accidentally becoming a bottleneck in a long, overdue project.

And while a rise in candid out-of-office replies go some way in setting boundaries, annual leave isn’t always clear-cut. Plus, virtual presenteeism can make us feel like we have to be available 24/7 – even in designated periods of downtime.

We’re always just a click away from being online

Our out-of-office stress can often lead to a ‘quick check’ of emails or an innocent reply, and in some cases, a leisurely half day. Because ultimately, when we go on annual leave, our company doesn’t. The wheels keep on turning. Unless everyone else stops working, it can be hard to switch off entirely – especially if we’re vacationing in our living rooms, mere metres away from our laptops.

Though many of us have been working harder and longer in the past year as the lines between work and life have withered away, the issue isn’t pandemic-specific.

Writer Stuart Heritage recalls the pre-pandemic agony of being constantly ‘on call’, to the extent where he was asked – on Christmas Day – to write a piece on funny jobs Justin Bieber could do instead of singing. The request was followed by: “PS Merry Christmas.”

When he considers ignoring such unreasonable demands, he pictures all the editors around the world shaking their heads at his audacity to choose a vacation over a commissioned piece. He worries he’ll damage his reputation or worse, get boycotted. “Clearly,” he writes, “that isn’t the case.”

In a world where taking a break can lead to more stress, how are employees ever meant to switch off, recharge, and avoid burnout?

Unless everyone else stops working, it can be hard to switch off entirely – especially if we’re vacationing in our living rooms, mere metres away from our laptops.

Global vacations days are on the rise

Well, it seems like company holidays are a safe bet. And Bumble isn’t the only business to run with the idea. LinkedIn’s Chief People Officer, Teuila Hanson, recently said the company’s global workforce was “having trouble finding that line of demarcation between work and home”, which is why all 16,000 employees had a week off in April.

Likewise, accounting firm PwC has been experimenting with global vacation days, too. DeAnne Aussem, PwC’s Leadership Development and Wellbeing Leader explains: “The goal is to disconnect across the entire firm and recharge as a group.”

And in the States, the New York Times has followed suit to help employees deal with the stress of the pandemic. Executives recently announced: “Recognizing how hard the past year has felt, we’re announcing the launch of quarterly Global Days Off for the remaining three quarters of 2021.”

The art of collectively pressing pause for a week can actually be traced back to the Industrial Revolution. As explained in The Economist: “An assembly line does not function very well without a full complement of workers, so it makes sense for them to all take time off together.”

Logistically, however, there’s a handful of planning involved with business-wide breaks, and small emergency teams tend to man-the-fort in case anything does go wrong. But when there’s no business-as-usual to quickly check in on, time off can actually feel like time off, and wellbeing becomes a shared priority.