Nike has joined the growing swell of companies choosing to give staff an extra week off work to support their mental health today. In a message posted to LinkedIn, Nike’s head of insights Matt Marazzo told staff at their Oregon corporate headquarters to ‘power down’ ahead of their expected return the office next month.
‘Take the time to unwind, destress and spend time with your loved ones. Do not work,’ Marazzo posted. ‘In a year (or two) unlike any other, taking time for rest and recovery is key to performing well and staying sane.
‘This past year has been rough - we're all human and living through a traumatic event,’ he continued. ‘But I'm hopeful that the empathy and grace we continue to show our teammates will have a positive impact on the culture of work moving forward. It's not just a "week off" for the team... it's an acknowledgment that we can prioritize mental health and still get work done.’
The move has been celebrated by staff and industry peers alike, receiving over 21,000 likes on the post. It follows similar initiatives by dating app Bumble and LinkedIn itself – with other US firms like Apple, Uber and bank Wells Fargo delaying plans for staff to return to the office as covid infections continue to rise in the US.
Companies are reacting to ‘collective burnout’ – as Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd put it – with many business heads realising that giving staff a well-earned break after 18 months of pandemic-inducing stress is vital to future productivity.
But will the trend continue? In the UK, it seems to be all systems go for a lot of companies hoping to return to our pre-pandemic working ways. Just one year ago, experts were claiming that the move to home working would revolutionise our attitudes toward flexibility, but the success of the vaccination programme has changed all of that: the past few months have seen a number of businesses urge a return to ‘normal’. In June, chancellor Rishi Sunak also told LinkedIn news that returning to the office was vital for young workers in order to form strong career relationships.
This is despite numerous studies finding that most employees want to keep working from home post-pandemic. In March, for example, YouGov data showed that fewer than one in ten want to return to the office full time. Just this week, RADA Business found that at least 45% of workers are either extremely or very interested in making the shift to home-working permanent.
Of course, there’s a difference between returning to the office and being granted more leave for living through such a traumatic period of global history – perhaps the former might induce the latter in efforts to appease staff that aren’t so keen on getting back to the water-cooler. Whatever happens across the board, companies like Nike, Bumble and LinkedIn are certainly leading the way when it comes to prioritising the mental health and emotional wellbeing of their staff – but what do you think, should we all get the same privilege of a mental health week right now?
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