Dive Brief:

• Bumble is the latest big-name U.S. company to give its employees a "burnout break." The break, which took the form of an extra week of paid vacation, occurred from June 21 to June 25. The goal was to give its 700 employees a week where they could be "fully offline."
• Some customer support staff worked during the fourth week of June, a Bumble spokesperson told BBC. However, Bumble also gave these employees an extra week of leave to take in the future.
• Back in April, LinkedIn provided its employees a global burnout break. Mozilla followed suit with its own global week off. HubSpot is up next with a global Week of Rest following the 4th of July weekend.

Dive Insight:

Like other employers, Bumble has grappled with the mental health toll that the COVID-19 pandemic has taken on employees. 

"Our global teams have had a very challenging time during the pandemic," a Bumble spokesperson told HR Dive. "As vaccination rates have increased and restrictions have begun to ease, we wanted to give our teams around the world an opportunity to shut off and focus on themselves for a week." 

This year, a handful of big-name companies have provided additional, paid time off to buck employee burnout. From April 5 to April 9, LinkedIn employees across the globe took a week off. "We wanted to make sure we could give them something really valuable, and what we think is most valuable right now is time for all of us to collectively walk away," LinkedIn Chief People Officer Teuila Hanson told CNN. 

Similar to Bumble, most of LinkedIn’s 15,900-strong full-time workforce took the first full week of April off. A core team held down the fort with the ability to schedule a paid week off later. Mozilla — which had already been providing employees a "well-received" day of rest each month — traded its annual June intensive off-site for a global paid week off. Mozilla maintained a small staff for Firefox-related updates and gave these employees the option to schedule their own week of rest.

Citing both pandemic-era stress and the racial justice trauma, HubSpot has launched a mental health initiative called "HubSpot Unplugged." This includes a global Week of Rest, which kicks off July 5 and ends July 9. 

"We know that our customers aren’t just buying our software. They're also trusting the people who build, support, and sell that software," HubSpot Chief People Officer Katie Burke said in a press release. "As a result, we need to ensure those people are well-rested and able to support our customer and partner needs for the long haul. As leaders, it's our job to show our employees that taking time off isn’t just encouraged, it’s critical."

The link between employee well-being and business success has long been made, and continues to be proven throughout the pandemic. As companies struggle with retention and as U.S. quit rates reach a record high (arguably due to burnout, experts say), mental health measures like a paid week off are proving to be worthwhile considerations.