How can leave initiatives support employee wellness?

leave initiatives

Need to know:

Alternative leave policies can help boost employee wellbeing by accommodating the external pressures and commitments that affect employees at work.
Senior leaders and management are vital in ensuring the success of these types of policies.
Employers should consult staff to see what leave initiatives would most benefit and support them.

Organisations, both globally and in the UK, have begun to breathe new life into employee leave policies. For example, audio branding organisation PHMG allocates specific paid leave for its 450 global staff around their wedding day and child’s first day of school, while social media platform Facebook enables employees to take up to six weeks of paid leave to care for a sick relative, as well as an additional three days to look after a family member with a short-term illness.

Leave initiatives now extend beyond statutory annual entitlements or maternity and paternity provisions; so, what do employers need to consider when launching their own policies, and how can these, in turn, boost employee wellness?

Supporting staff wellbeing

There are many reasons to implement alternative leave policies; primarily, they are used to impact employee wellbeing by supporting work-life balance, mental health, personal commitments and hobbies or passions.

Mike Blake, director, health and benefits GB at Willis Towers Watson, says: “Employers recognise that they can determine what work pressure looks like, to an extent. They’re just trying to help with the home pressure because they recognise that [it] could trigger over into the workplace. [For] somebody who has an emotional wellbeing problem because they’re overwhelmed with stuff at home, [a leave initiative can give] them a bit of decompression time to deal with that.”

Increased employee engagement can also be the result of an innovative leave arrangement. Gemma Dainty, reward interim and benefits consultant at Reward Power, explains: “Letting people do the things they love is going to make them feel more engaged with their employer, but also supports their mental health.”

Outside the box

Unlimited annual leave is becoming increasingly popular, with employers such as Golin and Virgin Management leading the way. Meanwhile, some organisations offer employees a set number of flexible days, in addition to a base amount of annual leave, to take off when the need arises.

Ad-hoc days off to move house, celebrate birthdays, participate in sporting events, or indulge in hobbies could also be introduced. Other initiatives include volunteering days, leave for special occasions, mental health days, bereavement leave, carers’ leave and even ‘pawternity’ leave, enabling employees to take time off to welcome a new pet into their family.

Employers should consider renaming their existing policy, in order to get the best results, as was the case for software organisation Xero. In October 2018, it re-named its sickness and personal leave allowance to wellbeing leave; this was designed to reduce stigma, as well as to encourage staff to take the time they needed to care for their mental and physical health, to help avoid the burnout associated with a growing business.

Anne Allen, director of people experience at Xero, says: “It allows us to position things really quite differently to how they were when we were just talking about sick leave. It [helps us to engage] more positively about wellbeing with our employees.”

Leadership influence

There are challenges to getting an alternative leave initiative right. For example, an employee may be nervous of being seen to abuse an unlimited leave policy, and so could be in danger of taking even less time off than before the policy was introduced, or may avoid volunteering leave because they cannot source a suitable opportunity, or feel unable to be away from their desks.

To combat potential take-up issues, it is vital to have a supportive workplace culture and leadership team, says Chieu Cao, co-founder at Perkbox.

“These policies really don’t mean much unless there is a bedrock of great culture, because these policies need to be managed and communicated in the right way,” he explains. “It needs to start at the top. So, senior management, founders, [managing directors] need to stand behind these policies.”

Dainty adds that a 2019 objective at her current interim placement is for all HR personnel to use the entirety of their four-day volunteering allowance, to lead by example for the rest of the business. “If there’s a culture of leadership not taking leave, working long hours, that’s going to drip down into other employees and make them feel like they can’t take their leave either,” she says.

With this in mind, it is important that organisations seek feedback from management before implementing policies of this ilk. Cao continues: “[Employers] need to talk to line managers and make sure they have buy-in. These policies may require more management time and effort, and if they’re not aligned with this, then that becomes a problem.”

Choosing the right initiative

Another way to impact take-up is to ensure that new leave initiatives are relevant for an employer’s specific demographic. The best way to find this out is simply to ask.

For example, Allen operates a pulse survey at Xero that poses five questions from a rolling set every fortnight, rather than using an annual engagement survey. “[Employers] must listen to their employees,” she says. “We’ve found the best way is to engage with them through a pulse engagement survey and use that for dialogue. It’s ongoing and it’s evolutionary, as opposed to stop-start.”

Dainty recommends offering a choice of leave initiatives in order to engage the majority of employees. “If [employers] can offer the option for people to choose those days, then they can be flexible and it’s more likely to impact engagement,” she says.

Key considerations

When looking to launch a new leave initiative, employers should start by analysing what they want to achieve. This might be to reposition the organisation as an employer of choice, or purely due to a wish to value staff and support their mental health.

Next, employers should look at the potential business impacts. For example, alternative leave initiatives, particularly if opting to introduce more than one, may be more difficult to manage if an employer is operating a production line as opposed to a corporate office.

Communications to employees are also important. Blake recommends that the eligibility criteria for any leave arrangements are clearly documented and accessible for all staff, and Dainty suggests using a single platform where employees can find all the information they need on benefits and policies.

For Allen, the communication approach was a particular challenge. Xero had to make sure that all messages were harmonised around the policy. "When people are looking up on the intranet or they’re looking at their contract or they’re looking at how they book their leave, it really speaks to that, it really has that depth. That was tricky, to line all of that up.”

Some alternative leave policies may appear frivolous at first glance, but the thought process behind them and the way they can accommodate employees as individuals can impact on long-term wellbeing and an organisation's reputation. “People’s happiness and wellbeing is so directly affected by their work,” Allen says. “We’ve got an opportunity as employers to be a force for good in that space.”

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