If you were to close your eyes and picture your perfect day or week off, how would it look? Laid out on a picnic blanket in a sun-soaked park, crisps open and lawn games being played by happy family members. Gently lapping waves tickling your toes, ice cream dripping down your chin and a trashy beach read laying totally forgotten while you doze. Maybe the only thing you see all day is your duvet and the inside of your eyelids as you catch up on sleep.
It probably doesn’t involve you being confined to the sofa watching Loose Women waiting for the gas engineer to arrive in your ‘estimated time slot’ of 7am to 7pm (they’ll show up at 6.45pm – unless you sleep in, dare to take a shower or leave the house, obviously). It likely also won’t feature you sweating profusely as you lug box after box up four flights of stairs, intensely regretting your decision to not hire movers. Or sitting anxiously in a grotty waiting room, before handing over the best part of your monthly salary for a hard-won MOT certificate.
Such is the reality of life, though. If you’re working a 9–5, and you need to visit a business that opens 9–5, you’re going to have to use up some precious annual leave on ‘life stuff’, the distinctly not fun jobs and chores that definitely aren’t ‘holiday’. To rub salt in the wound, they’re usually things that cost us money, too. Urgh. Oh well, it can’t always be lie-ins, brunches and afternoon swims on our days off.
Or can it?
Enter, life leave.
What is life leave?
Some generous employers give their staff ‘life leave’, on top of standard types of leave – sickness, parental, annual etc – for things that aren’t work but also aren’t ‘filling our cup’. It’s basically for all the ‘stuff’ that life tends to throw at us. The less dramatic, generally less urgent, definitely less interesting but still necessary things we have to do that often can’t be done out of work hours. Chores, basically.
Some examples of things you could take life leave for:
- Appointments: doctor, dentist, mechanic, passport/visas, HMRC, court appearances – even if you could, do you really want to spend your weekend with this lot?!
- Home maintenance: sprung a leak overnight? Had a break in? Dishwasher flooded the kitchen? Most engineers work standard ‘business hours’ and unless you want to pay way over the odds, someone will need to be home to let them in.
- Wedding prep!
- Moving house
- Settling in a new pet (also known as ‘pawternity leave’)
Aside from the obvious ‘get stuff done, don’t miss out on holiday’, what are the benefits of life leave?
Privacy
Having the broad umbrella of ‘life leave’ means you don’t have to specify what exactly is going on in your life that you need to deal with. Maybe you’ve had a relationship end and if you have to say it out loud, you’ll break down in front of everyone. Maybe you’re acting as a witness, or have to appear in court for something you’d rather the whole office didn’t know about. You could be meeting someone for a coffee to scope out a potential new role. Whatever. You don’t owe your manager or colleagues your life story, and if you don’t want to share, you shouldn’t have to.
Being able to log on to your leave calendar and request some ‘life leave’ without having to explain why can save you from piling more anxiety onto a potentially already difficult, embarrassing or just private situation. Because honestly, who wants to publicly announce that they’re ‘just off for a quick smear test’?
Protecting downtime
Life leave gives you time to get your ‘life job’ done without giving up your downtime. It means you can book out all your ‘proper’ holiday (as in, ‘pack your bags and hop on a plan’ type holiday) for the year without worrying that something might come up and you’ll have no paid days off left.
The employers who offer life leave know how important it is to have time to do nothing – or at least, nothing productive. They get that annual leave is (or should be) about rest. It’s time to not work. As we all know, not all work is paid (if only). And when you have to leave from your paid job to do your ‘life job’, you can feel a bit short-changed. That’s because you weren’t ‘off’, you’ve just had to switch your focus to being useful and productive in other areas.
By ringfencing a special kind of leave for life admin, employers are protecting your sacred rest time and treating it as an untouchable non-negotiable. Truly, it’s the lord’s work and we should be flocking to these employers in droves – they’re the Holy Grail.
And being the Holy Grail comes with its own perks – who’d have thought – in that everyone wants to get close to you. Unique, generous and flexible leave policies are a huge draw for talent, as work-life balance continues to top people’s wish lists when it comes to job hunts or moves.
Higher productivity
As we know, a bit of R&R is key to productivity. You can’t be in ‘go’ mode 24/7. Smart employers don’t want their staff moonlighting as a personal assistant to themselves, coming back to work the next week shattered because they’ve had to pack up and move a whole house in 48 hours. If your weekend has flown by, you’re not first in the boardroom on Monday morning, overflowing with ideas and desperate to get stuck in.
And while we would obviously never condone or do this ourselves, the resentment of having to waste personal time on life admin might cause some people to be making personal calls or using time at work to try and tick off some of those jobs. Giving people dedicated leave for these things means there’s no reason for them to be doing two jobs at once, and they can keep their attention where it should be.
Are there any drawbacks?
While life leave sounds like the answer to the working adult’s prayers, there are naturally potential drawbacks to consider. One of the main concerns is that life leave, while offering privacy, could lead to less transparency between employer and employee. In some contexts, a close, open relationship with your employer can lead to better communication, increased trust and greater morale.
It is of course important that people feel they can be open about their personal lives, including why they may need time off, and this can go a long way to reducing ƒbarr and barriers to taking leave. But really, this kind of close connection is not a requirement for a successful working relationship and quite frankly, it’s some people’s worst nightmare. Life leave doesn’t stop you from confiding in someone at work if you want to, it just means you don’t have to. Life leave strikes delicate balance between personal privacy and professional transparency, keeping the door open but respecting boundaries.
Another risk is that life leave might not be widely embraced, especially by managers or admin staff who could see it as an extra burden. Where this is the case, it can give rise to inconsistencies to how it is perceived or granted. For it to be a genuine benefit, you must have a clear policy and get everyone on the same page. It has to be something every employee has equal access to, so you need to follow best practice.
Best practices for managing life leave in the UK
To make sure life leave is fair and actually useful, you need a great leave management system to ensure you can spot and cover any gaps. You don’t want to be putting short-term concerns ahead of employee wellbeing because you’ve failed to plan ahead.
You need a clear policy, and you need to make sure people know about it. The policy should outline what qualifies as life leave, how much of it people get and how to ask for it. Crucially, it must be clear that personal details don’t have to be disclosed – you could have categories (eg moving house, home repairs, appointments, relationships) without the need for details.
You have to be consistent in application, with no scope for individual variations in leniency among HR managers. Not asking for details helps with this, as there’s no subjective assessment of what ‘counts’ and you won’t have one person granted life leave because their dog died and someone else denied a final day with their beloved hamster.
Key takeaways
For the younger working generations – we’re talking millennials and below – life priorities and timelines have shifted dramatically. For these guys, life doesn’t follow the predictable and typical path of older generations: university or training, first job (maybe even ‘the’ job), buy a house, have a baby, progress in your chosen company/career for the next 25 to 30 years (paying into a pension all the while), retire and maybe travel a bit before… well, you know.
People now are career-switching, side-stepping rather than ‘climbing’, building different kinds of families or flying solo, moving abroad, going back to school at 50. Life is richer, more chaotic, less typical – and the traditional suite of leave to cover the traditional life events one could expect, just isn’t cutting it anymore.
Life leave is a crucial step forward in our shift towards more flexible work and a better work-life balance for everyone. It recognises that life is messy, unpredictable and chock-a-block with tasks that don’t always fit neatly around a 9–5. By offering life leave, employers show that they are in touch with the reality of modern life and they want to protect downtime so that they can work, live and recharge. They recognise a universal truth: no one can wait in all day for a plumber and call it ‘holiday’.
We think life leave is about to climb the ranks of top benefits offered by forward-thinking companies – are you offering it?
Author
Che Thornbury
Ché manages our marketing, communications and partnerships. She helps people find Leave Dates and make sure it is right for them. Her favourite weekly task is sending thank you messages to customers who review us.
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