Waking up to work after a long weekend can require multiple snoozed alarms, copious amounts of coffee, and general perseverance.
But LinkedIn employees don’t have to wrestle out of bed today because the company has made the Fourth of July weekend even longer by tacking on an extra week of paid vacation.
The paid week off is a benefit the company provides twice a year. It won’t count towards regular PTO, Linkedin account director Dan Colwin wrote in a LinkedIn post.
The policy started last year when LinkedIn surveyed its employees and found that the pandemic was inflicting “clear burnout” upon them, LinkedIn’s chief people officer Teuila Hanson told CNN at the time. Taking note of the need for time off to recharge, the tech company implemented the initiative LiftUp! geared toward improving employees’ mental health with additional training and resources.
Burnout has become a hotly contested and important issue during the past couple of years as employee mental health suffered during the pandemic. Nearly half of U.S. employees reported feelings of burnout in 2021, which McKinsey & Company stated was likely an underrepresentation from its survey. And only 33% of workers feel that they’re “thriving in their overall well-being,” Gallup’s “State of the Global Workplace: 2022 Report” found.
The lack of work-life balance hit sectors like teaching, caregiving, and health care particularly hard. Companies finally realized that burnout had to be addressed or they would keep hemorrhaging employees to the Great Resignation.
“What’s happening is employers are pushing their current workers to quite the extent to get things out the door,” Ron Hetrick, a senior economist at labor market data company Emsi Burning Glass, told Fortune in March.
Some companies like LinkedIn have recognized this burnout, giving their employees time and space to unwind. Online publishing platform Medium is also closed this week for a company-wide “Summer Break.” Last summer, both Hootsuite and Bumble gave employees a week off after the Fourth of July weekend to try to manage workers’ stress.
Burnout may show no signs of disappearing, but maybe workers making themselves scarce for a week can help ease stress when they return.
Sign up for the Fortune Features email list so you don’t miss our biggest features, exclusive interviews, and investigations.
