đ§ A paid week off to come back stronger. How Bumble and Linkedin are leading the way in employer branding.
đ§ A paid week off to come back stronger. How Bumble and Linkedin are leading the way in employer branding.
Linkedin gave a week off to all its staff back in April, and now Bumble also closed shop for a week. So why are more companies betting on mental health as the best employer branding move?
Ping pong, foosball tables, and free snacks. Do you remember when companies boasted this as a job perk? After March 2020, this seems like another era in history, and a quick scan of any job board or company page will quickly point in another direction: mental health and wellbeing.
Subscriptions of Calm have replaced foosball tables, the new Ping Pong is a gym membership, and other companies such as chocolate brand Tonyâs Chocolonely offer a minimum amount of 28 vacation days in the USA.
Yet Bumble and Linkedin decided to give the paid week off as a bonus. Tuila Hanson, Linkedinâs Chief People Officer, said this back in April::
We heard after our December shutdown that people felt energized, they felt like they were able to get outside, and felt able to do things like read books, watch webinars and watch movies. We thought, does it make sense for us to provide another paid week off, not only to address burnout and self care, but also show our gratitude to our employees? Because they are working hard, they are showing up and they are doing extraordinary work for us at LinkedIn.
Meanwhile, Bumble announced a full paid week off in June to all its staff by the end of April as well. Whitney Wolfe Herd, Bumbleâs CEO, who famously held her son while IPOing to show that working moms can lead public companies, is a strong advocate for mental health issues. The companies statement read:
Our global team has had a very challenging time during the pandemic.Â
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.
While the focus on mental health and wellbeing at work is something we are now witnessing across different businesses, Bumble and Linkedin have made sure that their employer branding came out on top in the fight for talent.
More than half a million results for âBumble Week Offâ and over 300k for âLinkedin Week Offâ are a bold statement on how giving time off can bring rewards for staff, company and be a magnet to attract talent.
