Excuse my terrible singing voice but it’s actually true… and we’re getting quite excited about it! In our quest to keep the team happy and healthy, we’re trying something new this summer: a week of shared annual leave. This isn’t just any holiday experiment – it’s our way of testing how group downtime can supercharge our wellbeing, boost creativity, and maybe even get us singing some old school tunes.
Why Shared Annual Leave?
Instead of synchronised swimming how about synchronised chilling? As highlighted in a recent Guardian article about the pioneering wellbeing work of 64 Million Artists, collective time off can increase productivity and sprinkle a little extra joy into our daily work groove. CEO Jo Hunter’s insights into the benefits of August downtime highlight how refreshed and recharged minds lead to happier, more productive teams.
According to Deloitte, “half of employees are showing at least one characteristic of burnout due to greater job demands and expectations, lack of social interaction and lack of boundaries between work and home life”. Our shared leave experiment isn’t about topping up holiday days; it’s a thoughtful approach designed to create a collective breather that allows our colleagues to fully switch off without having to worry about work piling up back at HQ. We hope that it will help colleagues to focus on rest and facilitate improved connection with their loved ones. By hitting pause together, we aim to dial down the stress-o-metre and dial up the collaborative and creative capacity of our team of Magic Mes.
So far this year, we’ve been keeping a close eye on how our staff feel before, immediately after, and one month after their individual leave. We’re tracking stress levels, workload perception, and motivation. We’ll do the same for our shared summer and Christmas leave periods to see how they stack up. We’re hoping the shared leave will give each of us the chance to fully recharge without fretting over overflowing inboxes or missed memos and if the impact is as positive as we hope, we might just make this a permanent feature for our team.
Thanks to The Tudor Trust!
This initiative wouldn’t be possible without the generous support of The Tudor Trust, whose wellbeing grant is helping us put our staff engagement ideas into action. Thank you for helping us prioritise the wellbeing of our team and making this possible!
Stay tuned…
At the end of this financial year we’ll be sharing data and seeing just how much impact the shared leave had on our team and in the meantime, stay tuned for updates on how our shared leave experiment unfolds – we’ll be back with sandy toes and refreshed minds in no time!
‘The Seaside’ by Magic Me participants at Mile End Hospital, from Getting Everybody Included.
Blog post by Ben Butcher, Head of Operations at Magic Me