Coinbase is experimenting with giving employees four weeks of “deliberate recharge time” this year in an effort to prevent burnout among its workforce.
The popular cryptocurrency exchange made the announcement earlier this week in a blog post written by Chief People Officer L.J. Brock.
After scheduling one recharge week in 2020, and two recharge weeks at the end of 2021 during which nearly the entire company shut down, Brock wrote that more than half of employees liked the idea.
“Recharge weeks work. In fact, 52% of employees said recharge days and weeks were the primary tool that helped them rest and recover in 2021,” Brock wrote.
As a result, Coinbase will be scheduling four recharge weeks in 2022, approximately one per quarter, although the policy is not guaranteed to continue past this year. The four recharge weeks are in addition to the company’s existing flexible time off (FTO) policy.
Coinbase did not immediately return Coins2Day’s request for comment.
Coinbase is not the only company looking to give employees more time off in an effort to keep employees happy and prevent a mass exodus during the COVID pandemic. LinkedIn gave the entire company the week off in April of last year, and the popular dating app Bumble did the same in June. Recent surveys show that employees have struggled with life satisfaction and mental health over the course of the pandemic. Burnout, which the World Health Organization defines as “a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed,” is rampant in the U.S., affecting everyone from parents to frontline workers and veterinarians. It is one of the contributors to the “Great Resignation” over the past several months, during which a record number of people have quit their jobs.
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