As employees suffer from burnout and their productivity drops during this pandemic, most brands are realizing that unless they give their employees some time off to recharge and refresh, their outputs will be severely hampered. Therefore, large corporations, as well as middle-size businesses and start-ups are giving workers surprise “wellness day-offs” or actively motivating them to take casual leaves.
From Hindustan Unilever, L’Oreal India, Nestle India, Mondelez India, GSK Consumer Healthcare and Godrej Group to multinational technology majors like Google and Twitter, are using this understanding well that employees are stuck at home and cannot revel in leisurely travel during this period.
Even newer organizations like Flipkart, Freshworks, Springworks, Mobile Premier League, PayU India, and Khatabook, are following this. The reason for this unusual move, to not only help employees recharge emotionally and mentally but also to guarantee that employees take a break from work.
Here are some other companies that are going above and beyond.
Bumble
Bumble announced that it was making the company-wide week-long vacation a permanent perk to its 700 employees twice a year. In addition, the women-led dating app noted that its employees would now have unlimited vacation days that are paid. Tariq Shaukat, president of Bumble, said that it had become increasingly evident that the way we work and are required to work has changed, and their new plans mirror what is
needed and how they can best help their teams in both their work and life.
Bumble also announced some updates to other workplace policies and privileges. For example, it said it did not require all employees to come back to the office full-time. Still, it would ensure their staff works in the countries in which they work. In addition, Bumble said it would give employees access to co-working spaces as some do not have living arrangements apt for remote working.
Bumble said it would now give employees a minimum of six months paid leave for birth, adoption or surrogacy of a child and for caregivers, a minimum of four weeks of adjustable working to move back into work. Bumble workers would be given a minimum of 12 weeks leave a year to take care of family members.
The company announced that an employee who was a victim of domestic violence or any other violent crime would be able to take at least 20 days of paid leave. Staff will be permitted to take a minimum of 15 days paid compassionate leave, Bumble said. This involved taking a break after a miscarriage.
OYO Rooms
Hotel chain Oyo is going to start a four-day workweek for its workers, in addition to giving infinite no-questions-asked paid leaves, said CEO and founder Ritesh Agarwal in a tweet. Ritesh Agarwal, founder, and chief executive officer of OYO Rooms, said that they are
moving to a four-day workweek but executing it somewhat differently, making Wednesdays off to let OYOpreneurs take some rest.
He also stated that OYO will be starting no questions asked flexible, endless paid leaves. OYO’s statement on adjustable paid leave meant that its workers in India can now take off from work whenever they require to. “No need to log them, just let the manager know, no reasons required, none asked,” Agarwal wrote in the tweet.
The OYO founder said the coronavirus pandemic has continued to test employees; bodily and mental wellbeing. One thing that matters is having more time for our loved ones and ourselves, the tweet thread said.
Ally Financial
Ally CEO Jeff Brown has been swift to provide leadership and responded by showing concern and kindness to their employees. Ally has provided immediate paid medical leave for any employee diagnosed with COVID-19. They are also giving paid caregiver leaves for employees caring for an ailing family member.
Goldman Sachs
Goldman Sachs has started giving its workers globally an additional 10 days of leave to assist them in taking care of children or older relatives hit by the coronavirus. The US bank told employees that they were allowed the extra time off to manage the “unique individual circumstances related to the intense impact of Covid-19”.
Bentley de Beyer, who took over as head of human capital management at Goldman in January, sent a note to the team telling them about the extra leave. “To encourage employees, we will now offer 10 days of family leave to our people worldwide to attend to family members, as required, due to Covid-19-related illness or childcare obligations, including homeschooling,” de Beyer addressed in the memo.
Fidelity
Fidelity gave employees a new benefit that affords more significant support for workers who are also caregivers. Fidelity allowed more time to deal with unforeseen life events and the opportunity to access expert care coordinators and health care providers.
SARVA
Burnout remains to be a worry. Sarvesh Shashi, the founder of SARVA said that the most significant discovery is that productivity from home has doubled, but soon enough there was also a realization that double productivity was beginning to cause burnout in the bulk of
team members. This is why we announced burn-out leaves, which involved one week in the month would be a four-day week. To add to this, we understood that the team missed the fun times at work, so on one Friday every month, we hold a Fun Friday session to keep the
team together and energised, said Shashi.
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