Bumble employees told to take a week off to recover from burnout

Founder Whitney Wolfe Herd told staff to switch off and focus on themselves

Bumble’s CEO was widely praised for the initiative on social media (Getty/Time)

Bumble employees have been given a paid week off work to recover from “collective burnout” triggered by the pandemic.

Founder and CEO of the dating app, Whitney Wolfe Herd, 31, is said to have sent a memo to all 700 of Bumble’s employees, telling them to switch off and focus on themselves for a full week.

Bumble announced the move back in April, tweeting: “We recently announced that all Bumble employees will have a paid, fully offline one-week vacation in June.”

However, now that the holidays are under way, it has come to light once again in a now-deleted tweet published by Bumble’s head of editorial content, Clare O’Connor.

On Monday, she tweeted: “.@WhitWolfeHerd gave all 700ish of us a paid week off, having correctly intuited our collective burnout.

“In the US especially, where vacation days are notoriously scarce, it feels like a big deal.”

The number of paid holiday days in the US varies between companies, but on average, employees receive around 10 days each year.

Burnout is defined by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as an “occupational phenomenon” that results primarily from “chronic workplace stress”.

The WHO states that it can manifest in several ways: feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion; increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job; and reduced professional efficacy.

Bumble has been widely praised for the move, with people thanking Wolfe Herd for her initiative on social media.

“Good on #Bumble for doing the right thing vis-a-vis #COVID19 and burnout,” tweeted one person.

Another person added that the education industry “needs to learn from this”.

Bumble’s announcement came as several tech companies unveiled similar plans to reduce workplace stress during the pandemic.

In May, Google announced that it expects that 20 per cent of its workforce will continue to work remotely after the pandemic, while some 60 per cent will work a hybrid schedule that includes around three days in the office and two days “wherever they work best”.

“The future of work is flexibility,” wrote CEO Sundar Pichai in an email to employees that was also posted on Google’s website.

“The changes above are a starting point to help us do our very best work and have fun doing it.”