- The pandemic era upended the world in all sorts of ways, but one of the most fascinating is the so-called ‘Great Resignation.‘
- The brainchild of enterprise software firm SAP – inspired by others with similar programs, like IBM – social sabbaticals take selected employees away from their 9-to-5 roles and throw them an intriguing challenge somewhere around the globe while working with a team to solve real problems.
- She spoke with Reuters about the value of injecting purpose and energy into work.
The world was turned upside down during the pandemic era in a variety of ways, but one of the most fascinating is the so-called ‘Great Resignation.‘ Employees are leaving their prior jobs in numbers that haven’t been seen in decades as reported by Devdiscourse.
SAP’s idea
Instead of going somewhere, here’s a notion to keep staff challenged and engaged: the ‘social sabbatical.’ Social sabbaticals are the idea of SAP, which was inspired by others with similar programmes, such as IBM. They take selected employees away from their 9-to-5 jobs and place them in a fascinating challenge somewhere around the world while working with a team to address real problems.
Alexandra van der Ploeg, SAP’s worldwide head of corporate social responsibility, is in charge of the programme. She spoke with Reuters about the need of giving work meaning and energy. Below are edited excerpts.
Q: What is the history of social sabbaticals?
A: In 2012, we began with a tiny pilot programme to gauge interest. It struck a nerve because, after the first year, it began to grow rapidly. Over 1,300 employees have impacted 6 million lives in 51 countries, partnering with nearly 500 charity organisations and social entrepreneurs.
Q: How does a social sabbatical work?
A: It’s an intensive programme in which you spend four weeks on-site. You take time off from your regular employment to concentrate on a specific strategic challenge faced by a nonprofit organisation and deliver tangible deliverables that have a real impact.
Q: Describe the experience?
A: It’s a high-pressure situation. You’re sending a group of employees, usually around 12, to a developing market where they’ve never been before.
You’re immersing them in an unfamiliar organisation and placing them in a team atmosphere with a wide range of nationalities, ages, and degrees of expertise.
Q: Can you give an example?
A: In India, we collaborated with a charity whose purpose is to close the digital divide and make technology adoption easier in school. They required knowledge in order to create a learning platform that would allow youth to learn at their own speed. This was before COVID, so the timing was ideal: not only did they obtain the appropriate feedback to ensure they had a robust digital platform, but they were also ideally set up to migrate learning content from physical environments to virtual environments when COVID arrived.
Q: Do you advise other companies on how to set up social sabbaticals of their own?
A: We learned a lot from organisations like IBM, which was one of the forerunners in working with models like this before us. As a result, we now work with a variety of other businesses to help them build up their own programmes.
We usually encourage other businesses to join us and leave certain spots open for them. The genuine value of what we offer is demonstrated by direct exposure to the programme so they may experience it for themselves.
Q: How did COVID affect this program?
A: We had to make a change. Social sabbaticals were halted, but we were able to offer successful virtual pro bono consulting models. We are optimistic that the initiative will be restarted in 2022 – perhaps not throughout the entire portfolio, as that would be too much, but as a conscious re-entry where we can test the waters.
Q: What advice would you have for other companies about starting their own social sabbaticals?
A: Don’t be alarmed by ostensibly insurmountable obstacles; they’re all controllable. The important thing is to start small and try it out initially.
Because this differs from firm to organisation, be sure the learning you’re doing is aligned with your leadership ideas and behaviours. With a programme like this, you need to obtain some real-world experience, which you can’t do by sitting in an office somewhere and inventing something in theory.
Q: How does this program affect employees when they come back?
A: It has a big impact on employee satisfaction. On our end, we’ve seen the numbers: social sabbatical participants have a greater retention rate. When employees return, they are more driven to execute their jobs and look for ways to apply what they’ve learned in their own workplace. They return motivated about what they can do to make things better.
Any firm that is serious about purpose and sustainability should provide its employees with the opportunity to learn firsthand what these concepts entail. That is what the social sabbatical accomplishes.
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Source: Devdiscourse
