Bumble has been dominating news headlines this week – and not for making love connections. Last week, the dating app company announced that its more than 700 employees can now take unlimited paid leave.
This announcement comes right after the company also closed its offices for a week in June to help employees recover from pandemic- and workplace-related stress and announced that the company will annually close its office for a week twice a year for the same reason.
“It’s becoming increasingly clear that the way we work, and need to work, has changed and our new policies are a reflection of what really matters and how we can best support our teams in both their work and life,” says Tarek Shaukat, president of Bumble.
This is a key example that profit and wellness are not mutually exclusive – these changes have come right off the heels of a year where Bumble and Badoo, another social networking site the company owns, saw a 30% increase in paid users as the pandemic had more people inside swiping through their phones.
The move, however, may come with an unintended consequence. The idea of unlimited paid time off sounds great – with 72 percent of employees expressing interest in the idea, according to a recent MetLife study on employee benefit trends. Prior to the pandemic, many companies were playing around with the idea of implementing unlimited paid time off, only to find that without set guidelines, employees actually took less time away from work, not more.
This is partly because employees imposed self-limitations, often choosing to take off even less than the standard 2-week vacations many employers offer. Others found their issue was the work itself. Bumble offers unlimited vacation, so long as it is approved by their manager and all work is done beforehand, but as anyone who has gone on a 1-week vacation knows – sometimes the act of cramming everything in the week before you leave and catching up the week after actually ends up leading to more work – and more stress – than if they hadn’t taken the time off at all.
The question becomes: in 2021, as circumstances and ideals change around work and work-life balance, will these issues resurface for Bumble’s employees, or will new attitudes help teams find better, more constructive ways to manage time off?
One promising step in the right direction is a company-wide week off – one that Bumble has committed to implement twice a year going forward specifically to help employees destress. Allowing time off for everybody gives the entire team – leadership and employees – the opportunity to unplug and unwind without worrying about checking in on their emails every few hours in case someone needs to get ahold of them.
Plus, by explicitly stating that this week is for employee mental health, it takes away the stigma of taking time for yourself to recover and reset in a stressful work environment – which is one of the top roles employee wellness benefits play in a successful workplace.
That loss of time can also bring major rewards – researchers found that taking a vacation can actually increase productivity by up to 80%.
Bumble is setting an example that it’s ok to take time away from your work and focus on yourself as a human being, only to come back stronger as an employee as well. But time off isn’t the only way companies can support employee mental health. This approached, coupled with work-sanctioned opportunities to destress while in the office, like employee yoga and wellness classes, can start to set a trend toward valuing employees, not just their work.