As organizations look for new strategies to engage their employees, one HR trend has emerged: mandated time off. Under this model, companies require employees to use a certain amount of the time allotted for vacation or sick days. While the concept is still young and details vary by organization, I can tell you that it helped me avoid burnout.
I had been working at Compt, an employee perk stipend software company, for eight months when our CEO, Amy Spurling told me to choose a week to take off or she would choose for me. I had taken a few days here and there before, but never a full week. I kept pushing back; there was always a lot to do. But apparently never so much that I shouldn’t take a vacation, according to Amy.
