Traditionally, sabbaticals are associated with employees taking a year off to write a career-defining book or to camp amidst wild forests or to hone new skills or to volunteer for a social cause. Today, companies providing sabbaticals range from finance to retail stores, tech companies, and restaurants, while the sabbaticals range from being partly to fully-paid.

There’s an upward trend in employers offering their people more long-term vacations and sabbaticals, and the evidence suggests that everyone benefits.

Sabbaticals are a part of companies’ belief in bringing the best of academia to a corporate environment. Offering your employees sabbatical leave will not only boost morale and productivity, but it can also make your middle market firm more competitive when luring top talent from bigger companies. When established correctly, sabbatical leave can be a huge motivator for your employees and a secret weapon for your human resources department. Sabbaticals bring much needed rejuvenation by giving employees a chance to step away and gain an outside perspective on life. Sabbaticals also give employees a chance to escape burnout or restlessness that might otherwise lead them to look elsewhere for work. A well-planned sabbatical isn’t just a vacation. Employees can develop new relationships with people and businesses that benefit your firm. They may also gain a completely different real-world experience that gives them new ideas for your company.

Ideally, no team should be so dependent on any one person that productivity grinds to a halt during an extended vacation. And while it may look good on paper, the only way to know for sure is to test it. This is one of the main reasons behind one of the more unique vacation/sabbatical policies out there. It’s a way to make sure employees are getting much-needed breaks, while also ensuring that the company is prepared for unexpected absences.

I am a happy person who has benefitted from a sabbatical taken to pursue my higher studies.

Do you have any stories to share about fulfilling sabbaticals? Let me know in the comments below.