6 Companies Giving Employees A Free Week Off
There’s no doubt there are great perks to working in the tech industry: above market rate salaries, excellent benefits and lots of fun extra-curricular stuff are just some of the ways Big Tech draws in the best talent. These tactics are rubbing off: in Tysons, Virginia, on the roof of one of Capital One’s banks is Perch Putt, an 18-hole mini-golf course. Joining it is a beer garden, an amphitheatre, plus a rum bar complete with tiki cocktails.
As a work perk, it’s not half bad. But golf possibly pales into insignificance when compared to the increasing number of companies which are prioritising employees’ mental and physical health with enforced or scheduled paid time off.
SevenRooms, which provides operator only solutions for the hospitality industry, is offering new hires two weeks of paid time off before they start their first day with the company. Dating app Bumble gave 700 employees a “burnout break”, or an extra week of paid holidays, in June, with the aim of having everyone fully offline.
In April, LinkedIn gave employees a “RestUp Week” after a company-wide survey revealed high levels of burnout. Manager burnout at the company had risen to 78% between the first and fourth quarters of 2020.
Hootsuite gave 1,000 members of its staff a “Wellness Week” in July, thanks to a staff survey that revealed that its people weren’t taking time for self-care or to process the trauma of the pandemic, and were instead working more than ever. At Mozilla, staff were given a day off once a month in 2021 as a way to fight burnout and fatigue, and teams also got a global week off from the start of July. HubSpot too has been offering regular monthly days off, plus it gave its employees a global “Week of Rest” at the start of July.
How does your current workplace measure up? If it doesn’t, let this be your cue to look at some new job prospects. We have some suggestions below – and there are plenty more on the City A.M. Job Board.
Global Agile Coach, Experian
The Role: Experian is on an enterprise-wide transformation to gain competitive advantage through technology (Cloud, hybrid-cloud, micro-services) and large-scale enablement of business agility across the organisation. The company is looking for a Global Agile Coach to drive this agenda forward.
The Responsibilities: You’ll accelerate Experian’s pace of innovation and improve the speed at which it can introduce new products and new capabilities into and across markets. You’ll create a ‘global first’ product build mindset, garnering cooperation across business units for scaling global opportunities and maximising product re-use.
The Requirements: You’ll need significant experience in enabling agility within engineering, product, operations, and non-technology areas like sales, marketing, finance, HR, risk, legal and compliance and a proven track record of achieving outcomes through scaling agility across large global organisations.
Find out more about Global Agile Coach or check out other roles at Experian.
Senior Backend Engineer, BVNK
The Role: BVNK is looking for a Senior Backend Engineer, who will be a top achiever and future star, to come help it build the bridge between crypto and traditional finance, specifically to help build out its business account functionality.
The Responsibilities: You will collaborate with the product team to iterate fast and deliver results, while advocating for the simplest, but most effective approach in everything you do. You’ll ensure that BVNK’s products are built in a future-proof way and will contribute to its engineering culture and standards to help with performance.
The Requirements: You will be passionate about the cryptocurrency space and will be excited by complex problems in a constantly evolving industry. You’ll need a Software Engineering degree or one in a STEM discipline and you will have a proven background in progression of your career and eagerness to grow.
More information on the Senior Backend Engineer role is available, as are further roles at BVNK.
Market Data and Transformations Developer, Royal Bank of Canada
The Role: RBC’s Quantitative and Technology Services (QTS) Rates IT team is seeking a Software Developer to work on a cross-asset platform supporting functions around execution of tasks and scenarios. The platform facilitates the execution of overnight tasks for computation of market sensitivities, as well as creating an entry point for efficient scenario computations for users in both capital markets and group risk divisions.
The Responsibilities: You’ll work as a member of the team to build solutions that assist the execution of the flow and you will design, develop, and maintain reusable Python components for business logic, data management and job execution.
The Requirements: You will be a strong technical developer with extensive hands-on application development experience. Solid experience in Python 2 and/or 3 and experience developing web services, RESTful applications, and microservices is required.
Find out more about the Software Developer job or view other opportunities at Royal Bank of Canada.