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Bumble closes to give 'burnt-out' staff a week's break

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Bumble closes to give 'burnt-out' staff a week's break

#191

Post by Jommi »

fatjokes wrote: post #20
asim wrote: post #2

Good. We're taking all of July off at my company. Why? Because covid was an incredibly hard period for all of us and we as humans need a break. Somehow we all just seem to expect things to keep going like nothing changed. We all just seem to be expected to gloss over the pains of isolation, potential death and stress of work and life with no separation or boundaries. We made a conscious decision at my place of work t…

Company-wide month off sounds amazing. Would you be willing to name it (would be great PR for them). If not, would you give a sense of geography, industry and size?

this happens at every company in most nordic countries. You take 1-2 months of every summer.

Re: Bumble closes to give 'burnt-out' staff a week's break

#192

Post by vishnugupta »

For me, the best part of Christmas & new year holidays was the entire company (HQed in west) shuts down. Without exception almost every single office across the world shuts down. It means absolute radio silence, no emails, no slack messages, no nothing. I realised the usefulness of it only when I recently experienced it first hand.

Unlike me taking two week personal leave, there's no anxiety of missing out on important decision, nothing to catch up on when I return. When everyone's back from Christmas holidays it's like the whole company wakes up from two weeks of hibernation. I found the break very refreshing. I wish we would do it more often, say twice a year or maybe even four times a year but one week each, one per quarter.

Re: Bumble closes to give 'burnt-out' staff a week's break

#193

Post by ClumsyPilot »

afarrell wrote: post #169
theptip wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to note, you can regularly ask your employees how they feel, and with enough employees get a significant measurement. So maybe they can measure the “woolly” morale impact of this. Tools like Lattice make it easy to do a “pulse” survey for this purpose. Also the great thing about doing this twice a year is you get two experiments so you can start to be confident it’s not just “Christmas makes employees 10% happie…

That assumes that your employees: 1. Know how they feel 2. Can translate that into numbers accurately.

You have to consider the alternative, which us not knowing much at all. This is not a precise science

Re: Bumble closes to give 'burnt-out' staff a week's break

#194

Post by Rebelgecko »

dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #163

It's called paid vacation in Europe and all citizens have the right to at least 4 weeks per year. I hope this boon arrives to the whole of USA one day, together with paternal holidays, free education and other modern achievements that are standard here. I don't mean to be inflammatory here, it really boggles my mind how a week off is even a thing we're discussing here.

This is different than paid vacation and has some pros and cons. Obviously it doesn't have the flexibility of 1 week you can use whenever you want. But closing the company for a week forces people to take the time off (some people just accumulate as much vacation as they can, either because they don't like taking it or because in some states you'll get cash for unused vacation). Making EVERYONE take the same week also helps avoid the existential dread of taking vacation because you feel burnt out, then coming back to a pile of 500 unread emails

Re: Bumble closes to give 'burnt-out' staff a week's break

#196

Post by FunnyLookinHat »

allannienhuis wrote: post #166
FunnyLookinHat wrote: post #92

This is excellent. My workplace (Moz) has been giving us the third Friday of every month off since April of 2020 due to COVID. The CEO called them "Breather Days" - a day to catch our breath, catch up on chores or home life, help get our kids school straightened out, etc. More importantly than simply getting the days off, the empathy that it demonstrated reassured everyone that we would find the work/life balance we…

Ours did the same thing, although we generally vote on which friday it will be for the upcoming month - people often choose to line it up with another stat holiday to make 4 day weekends. I agree that the empathy part of this really means a lot to people. I'm really curious how long we'll keep that in place, especially after re-opening the physical offices.

Ironically, our last one was this past Friday.

That was announced a few months ago along with the opening up of most US States and the soon-to-be-widely-available vaccines.

I can't speak for everyone where I work, but this felt like an appropriate time to shift back to normalcy in that regard. In any case, we have a very generous PTO policy that should make it easy for anyone to continue to transition through the rest of the year as they see fit.

Re: Bumble closes to give 'burnt-out' staff a week's break

#197

Post by flavius29663 »

dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #188
allannienhuis wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

pretty sure that they're talking about giving an EXTRA week of time off on top of whatever normal PTO/vaction time they have.

Of course, but for all we know this extra week could be the only paid vacation they have since for some reason in the USA there is no concept of mandatory paid vacation.

> for all we know

If you had any idea on how US orgs work, you wouldn't say that. First, just because the government doesn't impose something, it doesn't mean companies can't do it. In fact, companies so much more for their employees than the government dictates. It's the same for minimum wage: the federal government might be stuck at 7.25, but in practice low pay jobs are more than that: Walmart was 11 last time I checked, Amazon 15 etc.

Most US tech workers have around 20 days of PTO. Paid medical leave is a bit trickier: some companies don't give it to you so it comes out of PTO. Some companies require a doctor's note. Some don't require anything. Some require a note after 10 days....it varies a lot. And this is where the US could step up a bit and acknowledge humans do get sick every now and then, and cover for that.

Re: Bumble closes to give 'burnt-out' staff a week's break

#198

Post by xrstf »

alangibson wrote: post #195

The real story here is that this is news. It's common for most European businesses for 2 weeks every year in the summer. It's a non-optional, lights out, GTFO shutdown.

Can you give some examples? I live in Europe and have never experienced that in my country suddenly everything stops for 2 weeks in the middle of the summer.

Re: Bumble closes to give 'burnt-out' staff a week's break

#199

Post by alangibson »

xrstf wrote: post #198
alangibson wrote: post #195

The real story here is that this is news. It's common for most European businesses for 2 weeks every year in the summer. It's a non-optional, lights out, GTFO shutdown.

Can you give some examples? I live in Europe and have never experienced that in my country suddenly everything stops for 2 weeks in the middle of the summer.

I should have specified countries I guess. Austria, Germany and Netherlands for sure. Others I'm told but have not directly experienced it.

Re: Bumble closes to give 'burnt-out' staff a week's break

#200

Post by coredog64 »

gpm wrote: post #187
WJW wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With technological help like guns, obviously the man wins. Without technology but with enough preparation, humans probably still win because they could rig up traps and whatnot. Straight up the giraffe would wreck a humans because they can kick really hard with their long legs.

Terrain probably matters a lot here. On flat ground the giraffe kicks the shit out of humans. On uneven terrain with nooks and crannies to hide in and trip up the long legged thing, and rocks to throw at it to keep it mad, I think a human would have a good chance (not a giraffe fighting expert). Humans probably have more stamina, if you can drag out the fight.

> not a giraffe fighting expert

I think it's hilarious that HN needs such a disclaimer.

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