Bank of America will offer paid four-week sabbaticals, starting next year, to employees who have worked 15 years at the company, Bloomberg reported Thursday, citing an internal memo.
The sabbatical period will increase for employees who have spent more of their careers at the Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank. The bank will offer five weeks to employees who have served 20 to 25 years at the company, and six weeks to employees with 30 years or more.
Employees can take two sabbaticals over the course of their time at Bank of America, and the paid time off comes in addition to regular vacation days, a person familiar with the program told the wire service.
“Your emotional wellness matters and is an essential component of your overall health,” Bank of America wrote, adding the sabbaticals are meant to help employees “reinvest in their priorities in life.”
Bank of America is hardly the first major U.S.-based Wall Street bank to offer sabbaticals. Citi in 2020 said it would begin offering employees with five years’ tenure up to 12 weeks. However, workers would get just 25% of their base pay during their time away.
Goldman Sachs last year said it would offer a six-week unpaid sabbatical to employees who have been at the bank for 15 years or more.
Bank of America’s new program is meant to replace an existing sabbatical option that offered four weeks off to employees in the company’s global banking and markets division once they’d been at the bank for 10 years, Bloomberg reported.
Employees may have to be convinced, however, that they won’t be stigmatized for taking the time.
“Taking a sabbatical is not the kind of thing that super-engaged executives do,” Peter Cappelli, director of the Wharton School’s Center for Human Resources, told The Wall Street Journal in November.
