By Rachel Feintzeig
Companies want workers to get out of the office.
As they try to stand out in the hiring market and show they care
about employee burnout, some employers are trying out new
sabbatical programs.
But unlike the semester- and year-long sabbaticals common among
academics, the new leave programs, which usually come with full
pay, are shorter--lasting as little as a week--and occur earlier in
an employee's tenure at a company.
At Deloitte LLP, for example, employees can take an extended
leave after six months, while Birchbox Inc. staffers get a
three-week sabbatical after their third year at the beauty
e-commerce company.
"A sabbatical is a way of recognizing that everyone needs a
break at a certain point," says Marla Kaplowitz, the North America
CEO of media agency MEC, which started its own sabbatical program
last year. Freed from the office, employees at the
financial-services website The Motley Fool and the communications
firm Edelman have driven the Pacific Coast Highway, spent time at a
writing retreat and trekked up mountains.
Calling such leaves sabbaticals may strike some as odd. For
workers in Europe, after all, a three-week out-of-office jaunt is
better known as a vacation. But U.S. workers tend to be shy about
taking a week off, much less two. According to a new report from
the U.S. Travel Association, American workers took off an average
of 16 days last year, down from 20.3 before 2000.
Driving the trend is Americans' "work martyr complex," the
report states, and a belief that too much time out of the office
could harm their careers.
The Motley Fool offers four-to-six-week sabbaticals for
long-serving employees. And workers who have been there more than a
year get a shot at a leave through "the Fool's Errand," a monthly
drawing whose winner must disconnect from work for two consecutive
weeks out of the following four.
Now in its eighth year, the program was devised to ensure the
company can function without any one person, says Sam Cicotello,
the Motley Fool executive who now oversees the program.
But she estimates that about half of those whose names are drawn
try to get out of the prize, despite the $1,000 that comes with it.
They don't think their work can wait or get done without them.
"Almost everyone wants to win it until they win it," Ms.
Cicotello says.
Nearly all chosen employees do go eventually. The latest winner,
the company's chief executive, is currently planning his time
off.
A 2010 study in the Journal of Applied Psychology found that
sabbatical leaves of six months or more reduced individuals' stress
levels, particularly for those who fully unplugged from work,
according to James Campbell Quick, a professor at the University of
Texas at Arlington and one of the study's authors.
Yet shorter leaves function more like vacations, says Charlotte
Fritz, an assistant professor in industrial and organizational
psychology at Portland State University, who studies how
individuals recover from work. Employees' stress levels do go down
after a few weeks away, she adds, but the benefits don't last
long.
Birchbox has an unlimited vacation policy, but co-CEO Katia
Beauchamp says workers rarely take off more than a week. So this
year she began sending those with at least three years at the firm
on three-week "tribbaticals," which include $750.
"The first few, it was really scary," Ms. Beauchamp says. "Your
most tenured employees are the ones" who take the breaks.
But less-experienced workers stepped up in the veterans'
absence, sharpening their skills, she says, and employees returned
from their time off refreshed.
In industries with high turnover among younger employees,
companies might have to accelerate sabbatical programs to see a
payoff, executives say. Ms. Beauchamp says she knew the stars on
her staff wouldn't stick around five years for some extra leave.
"If we're going to do something for them, it better be something
they can realize pretty quickly."
Intel Corp., which has long offered U.S. and Canadian employees
eight weeks off after seven years with the company, will tweak its
policy in January. Employees will be able to opt for four weeks off
after four years, or take the longer leave down the line.
Ogden Reid, Intel's vice president of global compensation and
benefits, anticipates the change will strengthen the company's
appeal to recent college graduates.
"It's hard for them to get their brains around seven years in
one place, " he says.
For smaller companies with sabbatical programs, absorbing the
extra workload can be a challenge.
Portland, Ore.-based virtual-receptionist company Ruby
Receptionists started a sabbatical program in 2012, when it had
just 50 employees. CEO Jill Nelson says she has no regrets about
implementing the five-week leave program, which comes with three
life-coaching sessions so workers don't "fritter away" the
opportunity and $1,000 if they agree to let the company publicize
their experience.
About three weeks into an employee's leave, co-workers often
start wishing for their return, and some things at the office "have
to wait" when the now 190-worker company is short-handed, says Ms.
Nelson.
When employees come back, they are refreshed, but they may find
things have changed. One manager returned to find her department
had been completely restructured, Ms. Nelson says.
Diana Stepleton, the company's general manager, says the leave
was worth it. She spent August in Europe with her two teenage
children.
"It was the most relaxing thing possible," she says.
Write to Rachel Feintzeig at rachel.feintzeig@wsj.com
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