HR 101: Let’s discuss sabbaticals

Welcome to HR 101. Class is now in session. Today’s discussion will focus on sabbatical leave.

The history. A sabbatical is an extended leave (paid or unpaid, depending on the organization), during which an employee can spend time studying, traveling, or focusing on personal growth, with the intention of returning to their job.

They have ancient roots in the Hebrew Sabbath and shmita, a biblical law that suspended all land cultivation and debt collection for one year every seven years.

The modern sabbatical has become associated with academia. Harvard University, which started offering its professors a sabbatical in 1880, is said to be the first college to offer faculty time off to conduct research. By the 1930s, an additional 178 US institutions were offering sabbatical leave.

Corporations have also been known to offer staff a period of extended leave following a certain tenure with the company.

Take, for instance, Intel, which is often credited with being among the first Silicon Valley companies to offer sabbatical leave when it was founded in 1969. Its employees can take a four-week paid sabbatical following four years of eligible employment, or an eight-week paid sabbatical after seven years with the company.

By 1985, around 13% of US employers—including Xerox, IBM, Wells Fargo, and McDonald’s—offered employees “some form of paid sabbatical leave,” according to a Los Angeles Times report.

Fast-forward. In 2005, 23% of US businesses offered paid or unpaid sabbatical leave, according to SHRM data cited by the New York Times. However, as of 2019—the most recent year that SHRM surveyed employers about sabbatical leave—11% offered unpaid sabbatical leave, while just 5% offered paid sabbatical leave.

As HR looks for new ways to recruit and retain talent, they may want to consider offering sabbatical leave, according to HR consultancy Clark Schaefer Strategic HR. Some employees who have had the chance to take sabbatical leave say it has done wonders for their mental health and helped them recommit to their jobs.

“Sabbaticals provide a proactive hedge against employee burnout, an antidote for attrition, and a protection from career wanderlust,” Crissie Hoskins, creative director at Stoltz Marketing Group, wrote in a January 2023 Business Insider article about her eight-week sabbatical. “Some employers argue that offering paid time-off won’t help keep employees around, but my sabbatical made me more passionate about my work—and my workplace—than ever.”