After completing the inaugural year of its sabbatical program in 2022, New York City-based SAPRO evaluated the usual participant feedback and productivity levels, but one inestimable result stood out to Mary Maguire, leader of the program and SAPRO's executive vice president of global strategic partnerships: "We've gotten notes from a family, the children: 'Thank you for letting Daddy be home this summer. We had so much fun together,'" she reported. "It's a sort of unexpected moment, and you look at it [and think], we're doing some good work here."
For SAPRO, a firm that develops and provides a workforce of accounting professionals to accounting firms, that work began at least 18 months before what they sometimes call the "radical sabbatical" program launched last year.
The premise aligned closely with the principals on which the firm was established in 2017 by co-CEOs and founders Dario Grassini and Greg Maslov, Maguire explained. "They were sitting in Central Park, and they both had financial backgrounds, and they wanted to figure out a better way to bring business to life, what an ideal work environment would be. It was centered around radical flexibility and making an impact in the communities we serve. Those were the driving forces."
Based on those values, Maguire and team set out to push that concept of radical flexibility — which the firm already offered with remote and hybrid work models — even further in a process that required "a lot of planning, a lot of development, course correcting, and parts of it that had to stay fluid."
In its first year, the sabbatical program offered an opportunity for employees to take a period of generally one to three months to step away from work while still remaining a retained employee of the company and getting paid a portion of their income over 50% with access to benefits. Roughly 80% of the 186 people (of about 800 total staff) that participated in the inaugural year used the time for volunteering, which the program was also conceptualized to strongly encourage.
In the early development phase, Maguire shared, "Our perspective, after COVID, was, how do we push the reset button? So many professionals are feeling overwhelmed and worn out. It's a systemic issue, not just in our industry, but globally. To push the reset button, we say to team members, you have a community to support, and we would like you to do community service and take time off. We don't tell you what to do, but how do you give back in a meaningful way? And learning from that experience to bring it back to the workforce."
In the first year, employee activities ranged from helping with the cleanup from floods in Durban, South Africa, to an entire group that worked with and mentored schoolchildren.
The program is "set on the premise that we all learn differently, which is why we are trying to give people a sabbatical, to retain values for our team members in reinforcing work-life balance," Maguire said, explaining that SAPRO was intentional in measuring those results.
"We had an employee survey before and after [that found] a highly engaged, productive, committed team," Maguire said. "It is giving us benefits, dividends we didn't even anticipate. We are 13% above the industry average in employee engagement score and our turnover rate is 20% — less than the industry average of 25% … . It's giving people the opportunity to step back, recalibrate, and evaluate what they want to do in a meaningful way. It has not only positively impacted engagement, but it's paid dividends to the bottom line and productivity."
Fresh ideas
The sabbaticals have also encouraged innovation, Maguire reported, with participants returning to their work with new outlooks. "We had people coming to the table with different and new ideas: 'Have you thought about it this way?' We were not getting that kind of inquiry often," she said.
One of those ideas was for SAPRO, which previously deployed professionals on a four-month or six-month period annually, to offer annual contracts for employees and have them rotate globally. That has since been implemented for the approximately 1,500 professionals deployed over peak periods and 500 during lower periods.
Another proposal asked, "'Can we do this with our clients? Take time off with clients; can we do community service together?'" Maguire shared. "There was a moment where I was like, 'I like that.' It's a domino effect where we build momentum doing community service and making an impact."
SAPRO is looking into offering the client option, while also gearing up for a second major wave of sabbatical participants this summer. The firm has also collected further feedback that it plans to put into practice for future participants.
"One of the lessons learned was an exit out," Maguire explained. "The individual exits out, and the hand-off is important — we had that buttoned up. When they come back in, we could have done more to transition them back in and to highlight the experience to share more openly. We have a peer group of sabbatical-goers and companions to help the next round [of participants] to achieve that."
The enthusiasm for that next round has been building, with many asking for it since December, according to Maguire. While the firm has thus far offered an annual framework of people coordinating their time off, "Sabbaticals can happen at any time," she explained. "It's based on business need; if we can work around that, then the sabbatical can happen."
Worthy investment
Maguire advised other firms looking to offer similar employee benefits to be "very careful when implementing a sabbatical program. You have to set appropriate parameters for a sabbatical program for achieving what you want to achieve and that aligns with strategy. If you are not clear in expectations or parameters, there could be perceptions of inequality … If I could provide any advice, it would be to pilot it with a smaller audience at first instead of as broad of a group. We jumped in with both feet — but I'm glad we did."
She also acknowledged that firms are currently operating under unprecedented strains.
"It might be a little intimidating or frightening, with the amount of work coming to public accounting firms and the lack of resources. But it can be done, even if with a very small population. It does send a good message to the population, of putting you first, taking care of you, making a meaningful experience for you … and it breeds loyalty."
The return on investment of these programs will also be apparent in the data, Maguire said, as time away "drives employee engagement, reduces turnover, and has a direct, positive impact on the bottom line. If a person resigns or is replaced, it's 150% of their base compensation in order to do that. If you can retain someone with a one-month sabbatical who comes back as a well-functioning employee, more engaged, innovative, and excited about their job, I don't know what else you can tell them."
But Maguire does indeed have a few more benefits to share: "It gave people a chance to breathe, to take a deep breath from this hectic, disruptive environment we are operating in right now... a great opportunity to step back and renew themselves with a well-needed pause that was reinvigorating," she said, taking her own brief pause before laughing: "My only question is, When is mine?"
