Jim Hollincheck at the BlogERP site wrote an interesting piece about sabbaticals and the effect of knowledge workers burning out. As with most people, I first learned of sabbaticals when I was in college and couldn’t take a course I wanted with the selected professor because he decided to “go on sabbatical.” While it was terribly inconvenient for me, I now understand the true value it brings to the employee.
In the higher education world, the sabbatical is never about taking an extended vacation. University professors need to do more than teach or run their labs – they also need to publish research in whatever academic journals are appropriate for them (or books). When a university professor takes a sabbatical, s/he does not disengage with the university and stop all activity to take a breather. S/he does stop teaching for a semester to pursue interests that s/he would not otherwise be able to pursue or to focus on the research and publishing they are doing anyway. The key is that they are still engaged in the body of work that they do day to day, but their normal daily activities are suspended.
I’m not big on the sabbatical as time to refresh – that’s what vacations are for, and 2 weeks of vacation is never enough. I am however a big advocate of allowing your leadership and senior talent a productive sabbatical every few (3-5) years, but there should be some measure of alternative productivity during that time. You are paying them after all. But even though I’m advocating productive sabbaticals, I’m also at the same time saying that a leader should be disengaged with the day to day tasks of running a business or producing a product.
Most of the organizations that offer sabbaticals are professional service firms (analyst firms like Gartner, consultancies, etc…) where it’s easier to pull away from projects as opposed to a “job.” However, it may be easier to keep consultants “fresh” be giving them new learning opportunities and presenting them with different types of projects to expand the scope of their experience. You can also allow them to have a larger voice in choosing what projects they’d be interested in.
This is also executable for people with “normal” jobs. Allowing talented employees the ability to pick their career paths and progressing them down it, or by allowing them to choose the projects they work on keeps them energized on an ongoing basis so they don’t need recharging.
