Companies take over other companies all the time. Even in a slower M&A year, of which there have been a few lately, thousands of businesses hook up with one another around the world.
But few make the headlines that Switzerland’s UBS bank did this week, when news emerged about the staff it took on after its 2023 rescue merger with its rival, Credit Suisse.
As the FT reported, some ex-Credit Suisse UK employees are still able to take up to three months of paid sabbatical leave, which they were entitled to before the merger. Alas, they work alongside UBS people who are not eligible for this most desirable of workplace perks.
This sort of disparity can happen when companies combine. But the attention the story has attracted is telling. For a start, Credit Suisse might not have seemed the most obvious bank to offer cuddly, wellbeing-boosting staff benefits.
It was reputed to be jammed with so many hard-charging risk-takers that after the merger UBS chair Colm Kelleher said he was worried about “cultural contamination” from the newcomers.
This goes to show, yet again, that sabbatical leave is a deeply misunderstood corporate benefit. Once largely confined to the sedate halls of academia, it is still a luxury in many countries, yet also more prevalent than widely imagined, not least in investment banks.
Credit Suisse’s three-month sabbatical policy was relatively generous – available every five years on full salary for the first month, 80 per cent in the second and 60 per cent in the third. But it was by no means an outlier.
Citigroup has a “Refresh, Recharge, Re-energise” programme it launched in 2021 that allows staff at offices around the world with five years of service to take two sabbaticals lasting up to three months, on 25 per cent of their base pay.
And don’t think striving bankers would steer clear of such offers. When Bank of America rolled out a paid sabbatical programme in 2023 for people who had been with the company for at least 15 years it was quickly snapped up by thousands of employees. More than 20,000 people have now taken up the deal.
In the UK, 53 per cent of managers said their organisation offered sabbaticals last year, Chartered Management Institute research showed. Only 18 per cent of them said the leave was paid, but at least it exists
Financial services group Charles Schwab actively highlights tales from employees who have taken advantage of its policy allowing 28 days' sabbatical every five years.
Meanwhile at HSBC, people who have spent five years at the bank can ask for a sabbatical that typically lasts between three and six months, the first month of which is paid. I don’t see the policy changing any time soon, considering Georges Elhedery, the bank’s new chief executive, took a six-month sabbatical in 2022 when he was running the group’s global trading arm. He returned to be made chief financial officer and then got the top job in September last year.
[ Pilita Clark: The unexpected perils of taking a sabbaticalOpens in new window ]
Banks are not alone. PayPal has a sabbatical policy allowing staff four weeks of paid leave if they have been with the company for five years. Deloitte’s Time Out scheme lets staff take four weeks of unpaid leave once a year, for any reason. The Adobe software group offers staff in most locations a paid sabbatical every five years.
The benefits of such leave are obvious, especially for those in stressful jobs. When US emergency care workers were allowed to take one-month blocks of paid leave it cut feelings of burnout and led to “extremely low” rates of attrition, researchers found.
But any American taking a sabbatical is a lucky American, even more so if it’s paid. Just 6 per cent of US employers offered paid sabbaticals last year, according to the Society for Human Resource Management. That is more than the 5 per cent pre-pandemic, but unpaid sabbaticals have gone backwards. The share of employers offering them has fallen from 12 per cent in 2017 to 8 per cent last year.
Things seem better elsewhere. In the UK, 53 per cent of managers said their organisation offered sabbaticals last year, Chartered Management Institute research showed. Only 18 per cent of them said the leave was paid, but at least it exists.
I have been lucky enough to have had sabbatical leave at the FT. I know how refreshing it can be to have time to think and learn, free of daily deadlines. But I also know this is still an all too rare experience and anyone working for an employer offering it is fortunate indeed. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025
