Why More Companies Should Have a Sabbatical Policy

HBR IdeaCast

Harvard Business Review

Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Communication, Marketing, Business, Business/management, Management, Business/marketing, Business/entrepreneurship, Innovation, Hbr, Strategy, Economics, Finance, Teams, Harvard

4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 6 June 2023

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sabbaticals have long been thought of as an academic privilege, but a growing number of companies offer them, especially since the pandemic. DJ DiDonna, a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School and founder of The Sabbatical Project, has interviewed hundreds of workers who’ve taken them and studied organizations that offer them. From his research and his own experience on a sabbatical, DiDonna shares the surprising impacts that extended time off—paid or unpaid—can have on workers, teams, and the overall organization. And he explains how organizations can make sabbaticals work both financially and culturally.

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0:30.0	Welcome to the HBR ID a cast from Harvard Business Review, I'm Kurt Nickish.
0:49.7	In the academic world, it's a pretty established practice to take a sabbatical.
0:53.9	That's typically an academic year break where you step out of teaching and on-campus work
0:59.6	and spend it researching, traveling, writing, something productive, but also something different.
1:06.3	North American universities started offering them in the 19th century, inspired by the Hebrew
1:11.7	tradition of giving crop fields a break after seven years, similar to the religious practice
1:16.9	of resting every seventh day.
1:19.8	In the 1970s, some companies started emulating academic sabbaticals, but for managers.
1:26.1	Today in the business world, sabbaticals are often used as a well-deserved break from
1:31.0	hectic schedules or a privileged chance to pivot into a different role.
1:36.2	The thing is, the pressures of the pandemic prompted more organizations to create new paths
1:41.4	for workers to step back or step away, and so employers supported absences including
1:47.2	sabbaticals are more common than ever.
1:50.6	Here to break down works sabbaticals and how employees and employers alike can best go
1:55.0	about them is DJ D'dana, he's a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School and the founder
2:01.3	of the sabbatical project.
2:02.8	He's also Ben Onwai, DJ, welcome.
	...

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