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Lincoln Absence Advisor

Welcome to the Lincoln Absence Advisor podcast! As the disability and leave landscape continues to expand and evolve, we’ll help you keep up and keep informed. Our podcasts take a deep dive into important topics such as the evolution of the FMLA and ADA, state regulations, the compliance challenge, and the complexities of day-to-day administration. In this podcast, our Lincoln benefit professionals provide thoughtful and vigorous conversations that tackle the important leave topics employers need to understand.

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Lincoln Absence Advisor

Sabbatical leave allows time for a break

October 31, 2022 • Lincoln Financial Group • Season 3 • Episode 59

Extended leave, gap time, sabbatical. Whatever the name, it offers employees time they may need to attend to personal matters — and may help attract and retain talent. Meta’s benefit program manager joins the latest Lincoln Absence Advisor as we explore the benefits of this unique extended personal leave. We’ll also discuss how other organizations may approach similar programs and how they handle scheduling, manager education, and workflow.

Karen Batson: 0:00

Hi everyone, this is Karen Batson Marketing Manager at Lincoln Financial Group. In today's episode we talk about sabbatical leave or extended personal leave. I'm joined by Ryan Green time away and benefits strategy program manager from Meta, Grace Hunt national account executive from Lincoln and Katie Devney, senior account director also from Lincoln. And we start by talking about Meta's program, but expand on how it can be different across industry, workforce makeup, or even your absence strategy. We go through various best practices and discuss things that we're observing. We also discuss the impact not only the employee, but the organization. I hope you really enjoy today's episode. Hi, everyone, welcome to podcast first time guests. Hi, everyone excited. We'll start off with an easy question. Do you mind introducing yourself and kind of how you're connected to the topic we're gonna discuss and leave and disability and all that fun stuff. Ryan, how would you start?

Ryan Green: 1:07

All right, I'm Ryan Green. I support time away programs for North America at Meta. The way I'm connected to this is I work closely with Grace Hunt, who is the account manager for our time away programs at Lincoln. And so they're our administrator and looking forward to talking to you all today about sabbatical leaves and recharge. I think we're gonna have a great discussion. So kick it over to Grace.

Grace Hunt: 1:29

Thanks, Ryan. I'm Grace Hunt. I'm the National Account Executive here on the Lincoln side. So as Ryan mentioned, I'm the account manager who partnered very closely with Meta as their lead administrator to help manage all of their programs and be sure everything ran smoothly for all things time away. So like Ryan said, I'm also very excited to talk sabbatical. I feel like it's a what's the word I'm looking for? It's a big initiative. Yeah, big trend across so many different companies. And I think we've seen a lot of value of it. So and then I'll I guess, pass it over to Katie.

Katie Devney: 1:58

Yeah. Hi. My name is Katie Devney, and I am the sales rep who is associated with the Meta account. I'm involved in kind of renewals and more escalated issues. If there are any ever like plan design changes, or things that we were going to be implementing a new I would step in, I'm also here as another layer of support for Grace. And I'm located in the Bay Area with Grace and Ryan, and I've been with Lincoln myself for 16 years. For background. I actually worked with Meta when we used to call them Facebook. And was the original person who went to the Facebook campus when it was super new, and did a finalist presentation with a couple other people before either of these two were on the teams yet. So I am the oldest, I guess.

Ryan Green: 2:52

Yeah. That was back when we just had the long term disability product we've come along way.

Katie Devney: 2:59

Right, right. Yeah. Yeah, totally.

Karen Batson: 3:02

That's a good segue. Maybe before we dive into the topic, do you want to talk about the partnership between Meta and Lincoln and some of the value that comes with that? Considering honestly, to leave landscape and how crazy it is now? Versus probably when the relationship started. For sure. Yeah. I mean, when we started, we had like a long term disability population that like, anytime you would come and do like the annual review with us you'd like there's no status to share, you got your claim for the whole year, there's nothing to share. I mean, we've expanded since then, to now you guys cover most of our disability products. We cover most of our family, I mean, most of our paid leaves, Lincoln administers for us. And I mean, it's been a great relationship, we have it to the point where we have a single pod that focuses only on Meta applications. And we're able to customize and do a bunch of great things with Lincoln. I let Grace share more. But I think the relationship is a great partnership and a great collaboration.

Grace Hunt: 3:53

Yeah, it's definitely been really cool to kind of watch us evolve and grow together. So like, like we mentioned back I think Meta was one of my first accounts when I moved into the account manager role because it was such a small account, long term disability only, it was my way to kind of learn the ins and outs with, you know, for claims. In 2018, we actually work to add all of the front end products. So that's all I believe administration from a short term disability standpoint, company paid parental leaves, FMLA state leaves, basically everything from start to finish from a Meta employee's leave. And so we added all of that back at the end of 2018. And started with a smaller team than we have now. We've had a really cool opportunity to kind of, I don't know push the push the boundaries a little bit as it relates to how we administer leaves here at Lincoln with Meta because they do have such a unique approach to leave. So we now have a dedicated team that's fully dedicated of a very large number of Lincoln employees that allows us a lot of flexibility and customization to be able to administer Meta's programs exactly how they envision it and how we envision it. So it's been really fun to watch us grow.

Karen Batson: 4:53

When you think about Grace like it's kind of like a weird like cohesion that we have like we all wore dark colors today. So maybe we're working a little too close.

Grace Hunt: 5:04

I will say I feel like through the years Ryan and I have, you know, partnered very closely together since 2018. So we're going on, I guess, maybe 2017 going on, like five years. And I feel like you're one of my closest customer contacts. I can call you up at any time we can. You know, it's, it's been a fun relationship. Definitely, definitely a very fun relationship.

Ryan Green: 5:23

For sure.

Karen Batson: 5:24

Well, let's dive into kind of a more specific topic and sabbatical leave. So when I was planning this episode, I was like, Okay, let's talk about sabbatical leave. But as I read more about the topic, there's kind of a lot of different terminology between like break leave, extended leave, gap time, or recharge leave, but all kind of has the fundamental, same purpose. So I was thinking, maybe we talk about how you think traditional sabbatical is defined versus the type of break leave that seems to be trending now. Yeah, I mean, I would say we constantly look at what we're offering and see if we need to morph it or like, what our employees want to see, from what I've seen in the industry, not just to Meta is like, some companies like to do a sabbatical leave, or like at the end of the year, the last two weeks, the company shuts down. And they as a whole, they just everyone just takes time off. At the same time. We've seen some where it's more of a tenured base, like how long have you been, we want to retain you, we want to keep you with sabbatical until we offer some type of offering. Some have more of a program where it's like, it's not so much sabbatical, but it's more so based on how long you've been there, you get PTO, etc. That's more so not the sabbatical lane. But we've seen a bunch of different options and a bunch of different ways you can go, even within talking with our employees, like asking them, What would you like to see, some employers are like, hey, I really like my work is too time consuming. I can't find a slot where I can take a sabbatical. But more so can you give me a paid option? Can I cash it in? Or can you give me the option to take some unpaid time, but maybe not alone as long of a duration? So I would say, you know, and what that's looking at this annually, certain companies tend to like, follow the tradition. And some companies seem to like continue to offer different offerings based on their size and like what type of employee base they have, whether it's more non exempt or exempt employees, but it seems like sabbatical as a whole there's not one consensus, it's more so like, which customized niche works for your population based on the type of industry you're in is what I've seen.

Katie Devney: 7:22

We don't administer your sabbatical leave, right?

Ryan Green: 7:25

That's correct. That's correct.

Katie Devney: 7:26

So I'm curious, does it work that I believe it works? Where like, after five years or something employees get however much time? Or do you give them the option like what you're saying what you're describing sounds like different people want different things? That would be cool. If you gave them the choice to is that something that you do? Or would consider doing?

Ryan Green: 7:42

Yeah, so for us, most of our population is exempt. So most of these employees are salaried employees. There's only a small percentage that are non exempt employee. So for us, what worked for us is we offer a paid sabbatical that gives you a month off after you reach five years of service. And so for Meta, we found that to be beneficial. The only thing is now just caveat that you have to schedule these in advance, right? Especially if you have high performing employees, you can't just at a moment's notice, like PTO say, Hey, I'm gonna take the next month off, you have to plan this in advance. So for us, what worked for us is planning very far in advance offering 30 days paid off, but because the work industry because the environment is so like high driven, high performance, people get burned out quickly. And so you need time to take off and reset. And that's what we found has worked for us. It's given people a month off, paid reset, take a vacation or wedding, whatever works for you, whatever personal preference you have, whether it's you sit at home and do absolutely nothing. Even people that time to reset, refresh and you come back you feel invigorated, honestly, this is like we work with you all, but I just took my recharge a month ago, I went to Greece, I had time to just reset, relax, look at the ocean, take mental pictures. When I get back into this high driven industry. I'm like, oh, go back to those mental pictures. But it's really, for us. It's about resetting, refreshing and getting you motivated. Because for whatever reason, five years seems to be the mark. For us. It's like, after five years, you started to feel that burnout, you started to feel like this is a lot. And just taking that month off, resetting kind of feels like Oh, I'm a new employee. You know, I'm coming back. I'm figuring out what has changed since I came back. It's almost kind of like that new employee feel when you first excited you come to a new company and your like motivated you everything. I think that's kind of what we're going for is kind of theme that we're thinking about with our sabbatical.

Grace Hunt: 9:18

Yeah, I feel like when I think about sabbatical, that's typically how I would picture it as well as you know, after you've worked so much time for the same company. It's, it's kind of a reward or a way to kind of reset like you said, Ryan, and I feel like it's interesting to kind of see so I've Meta, do you guys turn off email access? Like, do you have the ability to continue to work or is it truly you're shut off during that time?

Ryan Green: 9:39

Because the leave is not tied to like doctor restrictions and things. We don't want to physically turn off access and thing but we do provide checklist that advises you like, hey, reset, don't feel obligated to check email, don't feel obligated to check in. And this is really your time, because you should. I mean, if you plan this in advance, you should have everything to a place where it's like I've either handed off work I've gotten into a good stopping point where I can actually take the time to stop and reset. So the intention is that you don't work that you don't check emails. However, if you're just one of those worker bees that just like I feel too disconnected, taking a month off, you can do it. I mean, there's nothing that says that you can't. But the preference would be that you truly just connect, stop, take that time to reset. And when you come back, we even give the guidance to say, hey, feel free to say and you're out of office, notice, hey, I'm out for a month I'm taking recharge, I'm not going to check these emails from a month ago, right like and when I come back, resend this if it's truly important, because the last thing you want to do is take the time off and feel like I'm doing that to come back and check 30 days worth it. You know, that's not the intent. We're so we're trying to help you truly reset.

Grace Hunt: 10:39

Yeah, I feel like that's where there's the most value in my mind from a sabbatical or I like that medicals, that are recharged leave, because it really is intended, I think these days, work is you know, so busy all the time for everybody, we feel guilty, if we take time off, it's hard to take a day or to off because you'd rather maybe be back and not have the stress of trying to worry about what you're missing. And so we're a week off. I know, when I take a week off, I'm still checking just to be sure if anything urgent or you know, life changing comes through, I can at least know what's coming, versus a sabbatical or recharge leave where you can completely shut off. I love the idea of putting on and out of office saying, you know, I'm out on my recharge, leave, basically, I've earned this time I put in my time, I'm now going to really need to get to me sorry. And I'll be back in a month. And I'm like, Okay, fine. I think the the perks of that, too, are that you have plenty of time to plan ahead and plenty of time to get backfills or, you know, make sure that you're covered without any concerns about again, having to work and you're truly able to recharge that's exactly.

Karen Batson: 11:36

I'm curious. So a theme that's come up in a lot of our conversations is the role of the manager in supporting the employee on leave any leave that we've talked about. So I'm curious, in this similar boat, you know, our managers empowered to provide support, is there guidance provided everyone's on board when this type of leave rolls out? Just kind of curious, your thoughts on that in that supporting role? Sure. I mean, if you think about Meta, or aka Facebook, in terms of the industry, we haven't been around that long compared to some of these more established companies. So for us, it's important that I mean, do you think about you taking the recharge, we were sabbatical every five years, you could have a ramp up period where a lot of people are out at the same time. So we have to give that proactive messaging like, hey, managers, here's all the people who are going to be eligible for recharge at the same time. Think about your workload, think about the demand, think about when they want to take the leave schedule it in advance, you can't have the manager and the employee out at the same time. Like, you know, you really have to be strategic in how you plan these things out. And so we're, we have to give checklists very far in advance. We're helping them think about all the things they need to think about before they take recharge, we're giving them testimonials from employees who have taken their sabbatical previously and saying, Hey, these are the things that I can say this is what I found beneficial. This is why I didn't like about recharge. I remember I was reading a LinkedIn article. And this guy was saying why why sabbatical was good and bad. And I was like, oh, no, and he was from Meta, so I was like, it's about what is he about to say . And it was all positive. But it was to the extent of, he felt like he had nothing planned. He said, I'm gonna take these three days and do absolutely nothing, I'm gonna just sit here and he said, every single day, I felt anxious, because it's like, I don't have anything planned. I'm wasting these valuable days, they only come every five years, I did schedule something. He said, I found myself just being the guy who drove my kids to work. I had a few hours in between where I put like, don't waste it, but I don't have anything planned. And then he said, I didn't go back and pick my kids up, I didn't have anything scheduled. So we're trying to give employees and managers like, hey, encourage employees to schedule something, think about major life events, think about what's important to you make this truly valuable. Because this is something that comes every five years, it reflects on the hard work that you've done for the company, and you really should do something meaningful, whatever that is, if you want to do absolutely nothing, then have at it. But at the same time, we're constantly giving them checklist. Think about all the different aspects of this and truly make sure this is a meaningful reset, so that when you come back, you don't just feel like you wasted 30 days of PTO or 30 days of paid time that you truly feel that you've made value of this. Well, it's funny, because when I think of the word sabbatical, like before I was in this industry from a work perspective, I automatically thought about education, right? Professors take a sabbatical to do research like they it's a built in purpose and an expectation. So it kind of goes back to they had one an obvious one, and you need to continue to remember that if you if you have that opportunity, how would you use it? What purpose drives you? And motivates you?

Ryan Green: 14:29

For sure.

Grace Hunt: 14:30

Yeah, and I think I know, you mentioned a little bit Ryan about, like, kind of retaining employees. And you know, I think that that's one thing that is so valuable, especially in the tech industry, as we look at how quickly you know, out here in Silicon Valley, it seems like people jump from job to job every two, three years. I mean, sometimes it's quicker than that. And so I feel like to be able to offer this from Meta standpoint, or I know we have a number of other tech companies within our book of business who offer the same thing. And I feel like it's really something to look forward to something that you can say I have put in my time and efforts and this is my chance to, to be rewarded for it. And I want to stay with the company for that reason alone. Do you see people Ryan typically after five years, and after they take a recharge, leave, leave after that? Or I'm wondering, as I say, you know, it's gonna keep me there, at least I get my sabbatical or my recharge leave. Is that something where there's the net concern at the five year mark, they've gotten it, they've earned it time to move on, or not?

Karen Batson: 15:24

Yeah, no, that's a good question. That's something we've also asked. And honestly, what we found is, if you're intending to leave the company, you're going to leave the company 30 days off paid isn't gonna keep you there, right. Like, that's not truly what it does. It's truly about retaining people who intend to stay, but they're just burned out. So if you've already said to yourself, I'm done, I've reached my point, I'm not motivated any more than 30 days off probably isn't going to make you say, Oh, I'm staying here, and I'm gonna fight for another five years. But for those that truly do enjoy the company, they just hard work and they need to reset. That's what people we find that we want to retain, honestly, I think as a company, that's probably the people you want to retain, you know. And so that's kind of how we look at it. Oh, leads into if you I'm sorry, go ahead Katie.

Katie Devney: 16:06

Sorry I have one more. Yeah, maybe maybe I'm gonna go work at Meta. If you don't take your leave, is it like a use it or lose it? Or can you bank it? Or how does that work? Do you have to take it that year, that fifth year, or Right, interesting. the 10th year?

Karen Batson: 16:20

You know, honestly, with us giving it to you every five years, we've seen instances where somebody's eligible for two, so they have not taken the recharge 10 years. And in a recent study that we did, we found that And now they're like, I have to recharge it. And so yeah, even with that, going back to like staggering it making sure the last thing we want you to do is take two 30 days sabbaticals in one year, that's too much to try to balance for the business. And so like for us, we say, Hey, if you're eligible for two, that's fine, but you need to have some time in between, so that you can take one if you want to take it a year from now fine. But you know, at the same time, we and we try to encourage them to say, Hey, don't wait too long. If you've been here five years, likely, you need a recharge, right? But it's about you know, if you want to wait and stack them together, you can but still, again, be mindful of the business balancing the load, how much time you're going to be off plan in advance. paid leave, and that's a big bucket, right? All paid leave options, helped entice an employee to be loyal at their company. So actually hit the top five elements. Just kind of curious, going off of the conversation we just had about, you know, does it help retain talent? What that thought sparks in your mind when it comes to this type of leave for companies? Does it help encourage as an add to that bucket? And just how they think about the employer? Sure. I don't know if this directly answered the question. But I think it's honestly about the industry you're in, you know, if you're in a more like I mentioned earlier, like exempt or salaried employees? If it's more of a environment where employees are not hourly, then probably yes. Because you can afford to take that paid time off with hourly employees, I think it's a little bit harder, because you need to think about backfill, you need to think about work balance, etc. So I think it truly comes down to the industry that you're in. But I have seen that, at least for our industry in tech. This seems to be the trend that in some way, you're offering some type of sabbatical whether it's we can't afford to like do the individualized onesie twosie, maybe we just might shut down the whole company, if that's the route you need to go. And maybe there's maybe your industry allows for like there's a period where there's a down period versus a little bit slower. And that makes sense for us to shut down as a whole. Or it might be more so like we're high-driven all throughout the year. And we have to be more nuanced and individualized to the the individual department or industry that you're in. And so what we've found, we've even surveyed managers to say, hey, what would you prefer to see? Would you prefer to shorten the sabbatical to maybe two weeks? Would you prefer to see us do like more, but you could cash in? Like, what's the preference? And what we've truly come out to say is that it really depends, at least in the tech industry, on the specifics you could have right within tech, you could have HR and HR, I'd be more structured. And then you could have people who focus on like VR and social media and things like that, where they're on, like, illegal, et cetera, things can pop up at any given time, we can't afford to shut down for a whole period, we need to be like more like, hey, when can the business afford to do that? We're gonna have some vendors and say, hey, Q3 is high driven for us. Absolutely, no sabbaticals in Q3. So I think you have to assess your industry and say, what works for us, and there's no one size fits all, but you have to kind of look at what's the best solution based on your type of industry. Just not offering it's gonna make the impact. You really got to do you do your homework. Is that right? Yes. Yes, exactly. Grace, I was wondering, from your perspective, in maybe other organizations that look at this type of leave? How do those conversations start to build those strategies and investigate what's right for them knowing Meta's 30 days may not apply to other organizations that you guys see.

Grace Hunt: 19:48

I think a big part of it is the other leaves that they offer. So in addition to a sabbatical, what are the other leave programs look like? So, I mean, I know that there's so many companies still in the United States right now in so many states who don't have have you paid family leaves, or if a mother is having a baby, she doesn't have a paid maternity leave, which is just crazy at this point in time in my mind. And so I think, you know, in those instances, companies who don't offer leaves like that, if they were going to be offering some sort of leave like this, you could imagine that you know, and planning out your life, you'd be looking to play on your sabbatical around when you need to have a baby, or when you need to, when you're going to have a baby to ensure that you're going to have the paid time off. So I think, you know, it definitely depends on the company structure and the situation. But I think a huge portion of that is the other leaves of the offering whether or not they're paid, which is a difficult thing. I think, right now,

Katie Devney: 20:36

I think we're also like on a bit of an island where we're located here in the Bay Area, like, the sabbatical thing is huge and high tech. And we're all in I mean, we're not in high tech, like you are, but we work with a lot of high tech companies like you all. And so it's super common that people offer a sabbatical leave like this. We're also like, I have like several customers who do like a two week shutdown at the end of the year, and whatever groups maybe who are like more established tech and aren't like growing as quickly as as Meta. I was gonna say earlier, I think that at the time that we added just your long term disability to begin with, I believe you had like a couple of definitely under 5,000 employees. And now you have what, like 40 or 50,000 employees? Is that right?

Karen Batson: 21:15

Yeah. And that's that's actually a good point. When we first started out, our sabbatical was not paid like we were smaller, right? We needed to give you time to reset, but it wasn't paid. So yeah, sure.

Katie Devney: 21:25

Yeah. And so groups, you know, who are more established tech, and they've been 5,000 employees forever, and they're not going to do a ton of mergers and acquisitions. And they're not going to have all these social media changes and things like that. I think maybe they that's why they can afford to do a two week shutdown at the end of the year. But for you guys, obviously that doesn't work for the reasons you just described. And then like Grace was saying in other parts of the country, especially because California usually like leads the charge from a from a paid leave and maternity perspective. If they don't even have paid leave or maternity leaves, then it's oftentimes unfounded to think that they'd also be funding sabbatical leave me we'd all love that, I just shout out I hope somebody at Lincoln and that in the higher ups is listening, we don't have a sabbatical leave.

Ryan Green: 22:06

But that's that's a that's a great point, though. When you mentioned maternity leave, that's also something you have to juggle and balance, right? Like FMLA allows you to take up to 12 weeks off, you know, related, let's just think on maternity, right and bonding. And you could have somebody who's eligible for recharge and maternity. Now, when you combine those two together, that's a significant period of time off. So there's, you have all the time off that you offer the entire package and say, How does this work for us in our total benefit offering? Where's this sit and we want to be marketable and competitive to get top talent? Like, is this offering that worked for us? It's not just about like resetting your employees and retaining talent, but also how do you like, get new talent in our total offerings? When we compare others? We're like, okay, they may offer something that we don't offer. But when you look at the total portfolio, where does this sit? So I think that's a good thing to bring up as well. And then balancing the business, right, like workload balance, because something we often hear is, hey, the sabbatical leave is great, but we can't afford to have so many people out.

Katie Devney: 23:01

Somebody needs to work.

Ryan Green: 23:03

Exactly. Exactly.

Karen Batson: 23:05

How do we think offering and we've we've dabbled around this. We've talked about impact in general and retaining talent. But how do we think offering this as a way to attracting talent is, you know, there's a lot more being public with what you offer for leave in your you know, you can look at a job entry on on LinkedIn, and everything's listed, you know, we've seen, show us your leave from so many companies and stories. Just curious, does this also help attract that talent you're looking for? If you're able to add this to, I'll say roster in your leave strategy? Sure. I think that's a great question. You have to know what's happening in your industry, right? To the extent to which public publicly because you don't want to do any antitrust stuff. You need to know what are my competitors? What are my peers offering? And say, we have to be competitive in some way. So again, balancing industry, the type of business that you are, but then also to what are others offering? We have to offer something similar. And if you can't afford to give them a straight 30 days, what can we do that similar that gives them that makes us marketable to retain talent, because what I'll say is, what I found is I came from corporate and banking to tech, that was something that attracted me like, Wow, 30 days made after five years, because I mean, in corporate, you have people who have been there 20, 30 years, so five years is nothing. But in terms of like how big and how fast you move in high tech. You need a sabbatical after five years, like you feel like you've done 30 years worth of work and five, yeah, and so it makes sense. I feel like sometimes things start in the tech industry and then morph years and years later. Do we think this is one of those things that may grow maybe slowly but maybe grow? I think so. So I've seen two things. I've seen one where we like to be industry leading so we try to influence the industry. Let's offer the best offering and then hopefully it picks up and other industries follow suit. And then I've also seen where sometimes it's like, you offer something because you're new. And you can afford to do it while you're new and small, right? But as you get larger, you're like we can no longer afford to offer this 30 days is too much. Maybe we scale it back, maybe we don't do so much paid time, maybe we give you more of a traditional increased PTO versus a sabbatical. So you really have to juggle a bunch of different variables.

Katie Devney: 25:18

And I think it really depends on the industry because like, right, like you said, in banking, they don't do it. And like in tech, it's so different the way that tech attracts and retains talent compared to other industries. Because what I'm sure I know, Meta does, I don't know if it's you specifically, like participates in the SVF, Silicon Valley employers forum. And you guys all compare notes a lot, right? In the tech community. And it's just so competitive, and people don't stick around so long. And it's oftentimes the younger people. And it's just a different headspace than like most other industries, and also, Tech has the money to spend a lot. Like you said, especially like emerging tech, when you're young and small, or when you have like, you know, a bunch of investors and even growing like your yours is paid now and it didn't used to be so obviously, you know, you guys are doing well as an organization, I think it depends like aren't you know, you're not gonna get like, you know, a retail store giving sabbatical leaves to their employees, you know, so I think there's a lot of factors. I definitely think that like tech leads, trends, for sure. But not everybody can follow every trend, I don't think it's realistic to think that they'd be able to afford it.

Grace Hunt: 26:19

Yeah. And I think that's similar to kind of what we talked about earlier about kind of being on our own island out here and silicon, right. And in the tech world, it is, I think something that would be expected to many of the younger employees out here as they're, you know, looking for a job with any of these companies say they're an engineer, so their job duties are transferable company to company, where do they want to work if they see one that doesn't have a sabbatical, but the other five do, that's gonna go off the list, because, you know, it's expected. But then back to, you know, whether it's the industry or regionally again, in other parts of the United States where there's not paid leaves, right, they're going to look for more value in finding one that has a good short term disability program to be able to have a baby versus, you know, taking time off just to have the time off after a period of time.

Karen Batson: 27:00

That's a really good point that you all raised in terms of age, right, like a lot of the talent because they're working on new technology, you're gonna have younger people who are coming, you trying to grab the top talent. So they get out of these Ivy League schools, the top tech schools, were trying to grab them. So they're coming in, they're seeing these great benefit package offerings, they think this is the norm. We say to ourselves all the time, if you've got a company, you're gonna be shell shocked. What you get, you don't get this level of offering. But you have to think about that, too. When you think about sabbatical, I will attract the demographic, the age range that I'm going for, because these kids don't know anybody. They think 30-day paid sabbatical is the standard. This is their first job. They just came out of ivy league school, no student loans, no nothing, right. And they come into this and they're getting all this great stuff that they've set the bar.

Katie Devney: 27:42

We don't have restaurants, there are no ping pong tables, I don't live in hacker way.

Karen Batson: 27:54

Meanwhile, we have like 30 restaurants, and we're saying like, there's nothing good to eat today? Well, I'm gonna shift gears a little bit. And we talked about a little bit in regards to helping with burnout being early on in our conversation of a reason for a sabbatical type leave, I'm hoping to like, dive into that more, because burnout is a big topic. Now. It was at the height of COVID. And people talk about it a lot, especially within regards to mental health. How important is something to help the employee like this and burnout to an employer and what they offer? Yeah, that's a good one. Just in general, with COVID. What we saw, right was people who are eligible for sabbatical. We're deferring their sabbatical because it's like, I'm already at home. I can't travel. So then as soon as COVID starts to get back to some normalcy, we get boosters and things everyone wants to take sabbatical at the same time. And so it's almost kind of like my mental health was so impacted during COVID. And being sheltered in that the first chance that it lets up, everybody wants to rush for sabbatical. So now the demand for sabbatical is even higher. So now it's like, even if you want to make adjustment post COVID. Again, saying, Hey, why people remote, maybe sabbaticals not as much the way to go. You have a boatload of people who are eligible for it and other people who are ramping up to be out. That kind of goes back to your question before, it's like creating checklists, making sure managers can like balance the load, because we've seen that like sabbatical clearly helps with mental health. It's not solely by itself, but it is a reset. We've seen the feedback show that it definitely is something that can help improve mental health. But in general, even outside of sabbatical, we've seen that mental health claims and things have gone up much higher. So probably more so than before sabbatical is definitely needed to help as a supplement to combat mental health along with other resources that you need to offer.

Katie Devney: 29:43

And I think even just not even the actual sabbatical, but the promise of the sabbatical, like my like, I'm gonna have vacation in two weeks and I'm in such a better mood. That's something to look forward to. And a big thing with COVID. For me personally, I know a lot of people that I've talked to from a mental health person Do you have like nothing to look forward to use in the same four walls all day, every day with your same people you live with? Like, it's hard. So I can. Yeah, I could definitely see that being a high, high usage sabbatical time, early 2021.

Grace Hunt: 30:13

I feel COVID brings up a whole other point that has never had to be contemplated as it relates to leave related mental health related anything like that. And that was I mean, a huge detriment to everybody, obviously, across the board for a number of reasons. But mental health was one of the big ones. I mean, we have seen mental health claims, I think, across our block increase. And I think that's something that we're also commonly talking about, I don't mean to keep bringing this back to industry specific, but in the tech industry, you know, I think there's a lot of a lot of burnout, that happens very quickly because of the demanding hours and you know, not being able to shut down. And that's what we see across every tech company that we administer claims for leave of absences for. So I do think the promise of having the sabbatical or just knowing again, that you can shut off completely, but on you're out of office, back to what we said earlier, put on your out of office say none of this is going to be answered in this time period. And then when you come back, you can start fresh. I mean, I think that goes a long way.

Karen Batson: 31:04

Yeah, yeah. And that was it. On the flip side to mental health. The adverse side is the anxiety you feel up to taking 30 days off, right. That's why it's important to have resourcing it's important to give the manager things that help you be proactive, because I remember when I was getting ready, take rechart as proactive as I tried to be up until the last day I'm like, do I get these emails in a good space? Did I give grace but she needs so that I don't leave her hanging?

Grace Hunt: 31:23

I think you were calling me at like 4:00 pm the day before you were out, like do you have everything...

Karen Batson: 31:29

Yes, still stress up until that point, you're like, oh, how can I disconnect for 30 days? And they still stay afloat? Like are they gonna be like, What the hell was Ryan doing? Like, there's a lot of things you have to think about, you know, up until that point, and so it is important to realize like it while it's good for your mental health up until that point, you're stressed. I'm like, I gotta try to make sure I got 30 days worth of work in a good space before I go out is a lot to consider. It brings up an interesting point, though, where the whole scale of stress and mental health is more visible, people talk about it more freely, and there's almost a growing expectation for support. Right? You know, there might be alternatives. What are your thoughts on the employers role in situations like this when it comes to mental health and burnout and just helping with day to day stresses? I think that solely a sabbatical that you offer alone is not the way right you have to have a whole portfolio of mental health. And you have to work with those in the health and your health industry, your benefit package, offering your well being offerings, and say in our totality, when we think about mental health, where does sabbatical sit in there. And like when we offer everything, we talked to people about what all will support your mental health, you have to think about that, in totality, there's a lot of different things you have to offer. But again, constantly, you have to juggle also balancing the business, we can't just give you all these things that take time off. And then we can't support the day to day work. So it's like how do we support you while you're working? How do we give you a little bit of time and nice little break to take time off. But at the same time, we're still supporting you while you're at work as well. sabbatical by itself is not going to do like if you're like, hey, we have a great sabbatical program. What's your problem? You took a sabbatical you should be fine. I mean, even when you come back, right? Like we like when you think about mental health, it should be a welcoming back, let me ramp you back into this not let me throw you full in, you've been on vacation for 30 days, you should be ready to go. It shouldn't be like that. Sure, hey, here's some Google Docs that we set up while you're out with some high level information rather than trying to go read those all those emails and feeling burned out again in like two weeks. Here's the things you missed here, the important thing to focus on, let's take it step by step, let's set up a 90 day ramp back program for like 90 days, I'll check in with you, we'll we'll build you back up. You know, that's moreso I think when you think about mental health, if you're truly trying to support the employee, that's what it should be. It shouldn't be like I should feel retaliation, because I was, I've been here for five years, and I was able to take some time off and we've been supporting your work, and you should be ready to go. It shouldn't be like that. It really should be a collaborative, cooperative. Let's all work together, let's get you back into the flow of things. That to me would be a successful sabbatical program and also thinking about showing that we care about your mental ealth.

Grace Hunt: 34:03

back from it. That's not going to be the only thing that's going to, you know, dictate how somebody is doing, you know, mentally and emotionally as it relates to their work. You know, work life balance is a big part of it. But there's other you know, so many other factors that lead into if they're happy doing the job they're doing. And so while I wouldn't 100% think that a sabbatical is absolutely worth it. And I would love to have one Lincoln. I think that we need to be conscientious with everything else that comes into play that's going to affect someone's mental health. And I do think we're seeing a lot I think, you know, a lot of the mental health stigma over the last 10 years is started to fade away a little bit, you know, maybe not holistically, but obviously, it's starting to go away and we see a lot of our customers and employers working very hard to provide additional resources and additional support, which is a big factor, you know, again, it's going to help them in their day to day life. If you have an underlying mental condition or you're not you know, well emotionally because of anxiety or stress or your job a sabbatical is not going to change that you're going to come back to it's going to be exactly like it is. But it is going to help you feel recharged and refreshed if you have all the other support and resources that you need to be able to live your day to day life.

Ryan Green: 35:10

Agreed.

Katie Devney: 35:11

Of course, you have an EAP provider. Do you know Ryan? And I don't know, I haven't looked at your website to see all the benefits you offer. And I don't know if you offer anything like this or if anything like this exists? Is there anything around like besides EAP that people do in terms of like mental health or you know, like, making sure people get the care they need? Because EAP like can be hard? I know because you just help people it's there, but like doesn't always get utilized? I don't know like what the trends are in that.

Grace Hunt: 35:36

Meta has a great program.

Ryan Green: 35:38

We're constantly looking at having, like you said, an EAP. We're also looking at like, hey, employees who take leave related to mental health? Are they also utilizing the resource because the last thing we want you to do is just sit at home, take a sabbatical stressed out and no one's treating your mental health, right? Like, we want to make sure you're doing this in totality. So that's, again, when I say look at the whole portfolio, the whole offering, we want to make sure you're saying, Hey, we're giving this time off. But make sure you get in treatment while you're off and make sure you're thinking about yourself, like in terms of your well being reimbursement program, like, hey, let's offer you benefits and discounts tied to supporting your well being. So that as a whole was not just like we say, Hey, we're not thinking about you go off somewhere by yourself, and then come back, it's like, get the support and get the help take care of yourself, when you come back. How do we support you while you're back? How do we support you both in the office and when you need to take time off? And I think that's truly if you really care about the employee then want to show them support? That's the way you've got to do it.

Karen Batson: 36:32

Well, we've talked a lot about impacts to the employee, and benefits, what are some of the positive impacts a leave like this could have on the organization from the employer perspective? Sure, we touched on this a little bit, but like one, it makes you marketable, right? Like it shows that, hey, if you can at least make it to this threshold, you're gonna get this off. So that's gonna motivate you to get to that point is it going to also show you like, there's a end to the means, right? So it's not just like, I'm working every day, and I don't see any benefit of this, you're working towards something. And even after you have reached that point, and you've done that reset, I know that it's coming again. So again, I can get motivated, I can ramp back up to do it. Again, it's not saying that, like just taking a month off, it's going to make sure that you can do another five years, but it is something like you all said, there's a light at the end of the tunnel, I'm not just doing this for nothing like my company does care about me, they do support me. And even if you need to transition, even if you can't continue to do the two weeks shut down at the end of the year, or you can't continue to do the third one, we're gonna give you something to show you that we value and we support you. I think that's important.

Grace Hunt: 37:33

And I think back to what you said earlier, Ryan, about retaining the employees or the talent that you want to retain or those that are the, you know, employees who should be with the company for a long period of time. That's I think, huge. If you have an employee for five years, obviously, they're doing their job, they're performing at a level that they should be performing at. And you get to keep them for additional time after that. So...

Katie Devney: 37:52

Right. So I think in addition to it being like a recruiting, you know, retention tool, I think, also it has to, and I don't know how you'd measure this, but it has to help with productivity too, right? Because like a happier employee who's doing better mentally, because they have this recharge opportunity probably makes her more productive and centered employee.

Karen Batson: 38:11

It can but, oh, go ahead Grace...

Grace Hunt: 38:13

I was just gonna say even just like you said, Katie, you know, you're going on vacation in two weeks, you're, you know, you have a better attitude, you have a positive outlook, I feel like you would be feeling that way as an employee for, you know, two months, three months, maybe leading up to sabbatical so .

Katie Devney: 38:24

Oh, yeah, you went to Greece? Like that's a life trip, that's huge!

Grace Hunt: 38:28

Yes, I feel like, well, that's a minor. I'm not going to agree minor thing as it relates to kind of the day to day, it's huge as it relates to the overall impact, it's going to have any organization.

Karen Batson: 38:38

Yep. And we've talked a lot about like support and the person who goes out, but really, if you're truly doing it the right way, you have to think about the people who aren't eligible for sabbatical, the people who have to stay back and support the work. And so again, it's about thinking about sabbatical in advance, thinking about the person who's going to stay back and support the work and keep the business afloat and giving them support also, right, like maybe you bring in some contract workers a little bit, maybe before the person goes out, there's a bit of a shadowing, like, when the person comes back, there's a bit of a shadowing, where it's like, Hey, we're gonna support you and make sure that even though you're supporting this person who goes on sabbatical, one, the person going on sabbatical feels confident that like, hey, there's a support system is going to keep up the main roles of my job or going to be able to do the task and keep this project going while I'm out. And then when I come back, I'm not just gonna have to cold turkey code, switch and get right back into this. But there's a ramp up period, I think that's also important both proactively on the front end, and on the back end. So when you go out, your manager feels confident that hey, I know the main thing that you're doing. I know where the project sits, if anyone asked, I can give them updates, etc. We can keep this train moving along. So when you come back, you're not going to feel like Oh, you dropped the ball for a while. But we truly had a good plan in place to allow you to truly disconnect and the team is going to feel supported, they're not going to be burned out. And when you come back, you'll easily be able to transition back and I think those are all important things that you have to consider with whatever offereing you give, yeah.

Grace Hunt: 39:53

Yeah, so I think as it relates to the benefits of an organization, I think as long as the organization is doing, you know doing sabbatical, right setting it up the right way of preparing their employees who are going out as well as their team who's going to be remaining back and has the support they need, it should essentially have no impact on the organization as a whole to have an employee out on sabbatical, because you're taking the measures to have everything in place and keep the business afloat.

Karen Batson: 40:14

Alright, last question. Out of our conversation or anything, we haven't covered, what would be a parting thought you'd want to leave our listeners on this subject.

Ryan Green: 40:24

One thing we haven't really talked about, but while it sounds great just to offer sabbatical paid or unpaid, or whatever you want to give, you have to think about the financials, think about the tax implications, think about how this fits on your books, think about the type of industry you have, can we afford to offer something like this? I mean, if you're more of a industry that has a lot more non-exempt employees, hourly employees, it may be hard to put something like this in place, you may need to think of a similar solution, get creative. Again, like you mentioned, SVEF, where the employers forum where we talk to peers in our industry, look at peers in your industry, what they're offering and what works best, what we found is someone's already trial and errored this and they can kind of like give you feedback, you can see benchmarking that the majority are offering something, can we offer something a little bit more industry leading? Or is there a reason why our industry offers what we offer, you may not be able to do a sabbatical route. But other ways to do it could be like incentivizing more PTO based on years of service that could be you know, you accrue and maybe it's an annual thing, maybe it's like you could sell some and in industries were like, because what we see is leadership are the ones that tend to defer, right, the people in the higher up levels can't afford to take a whole month off. And so get creative, maybe you need to offer them a solution that is not necessarily a month off. And maybe they take like, every two weeks, they stagger, and they take like Friday's off for a period of time. So there's a bunch of creative ways you can do this. There's not a one size fits all. But I think the overall thing we're trying to get at you look at your industry, consider what works best for you, and also what your employees are saying and what is going to incentivize them to feel refreshed, motivated and retain them.

Grace Hunt: 41:52

Yeah. And I think you know, what I'm taking away from this is, in essence, you know, there's absolutely value in providing some sort of whether it's paid time off, like we talked about as a shutdown form, if it's a 30 day sabbatical after five years, or if it's I think having the idea of having kind of no responsibilities as it relates to work for a period of time without having it nagging at you when you're trying to take time off, is of so much value to employees and so much value to our mental well being working in the workforce. So like Ryan said, if you have to get creative and figure out different ways to offer that, I think that there's absolutely value in every employer exploring that further to ensure that the employees feel valued and supported.

Ryan Green: 42:30

For sure.

Katie Devney: 42:31

I just think it's keeping things fresh. Like I like that you guys are reviewing that annually, and you're always trying to stay. And that's, you know, partially industry and partially not like staying ahead of the curve. And you know, we have our open enrollment coming up. And we always have different new stuff that they're offering to us. And I think that's an important component. You can't get lazy, you can't be stagnant, if you want to, you know, continue to attract and retain the talent that you are looking for. And obviously you guys are leaders in that. So

Karen Batson: 42:57

I would agree with what you said. Yes. Well, thank you all. I appreciate the conversation and joining.

Ryan Green: 43:02

Yes this has been really fun! Thank you for the opportunity.

Karen Batson: 43:06

Anytime you're all welcome back. We're always looking for guests! Thank you so much for listening today. And of course huge thank you to our guests for joining the conversation. If you enjoyed today's episode, we'd love to hear about it. You can do that by reaching out to your Lincoln benefits professional, sharing an episode, or following us on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast.

Disclosures: 43:30

The information contained in this podcast is for general use and is not a substitute for the advice of an attorney or your human resource professional. Lincoln Financial Group is the marketing name for Lincoln National Corporation and its affiliates. Affiliates are separately responsible for their own financial and contractual obligations.