A fresh look on the company. Gudrun Leonhard Marquard is the manager of a development group at SAP (world leader in corporate software). She’s been working in the company for 22 years and has already taken three sabbaticals. “I love traveling. And four to six weeks off a year aren’t enough for me” she explained. She also believes the employer does take advantage of these absences: “After a while, there are things in the company you don’t see anymore. After a six-month leave, you come back with a fresh eye.” Other upside: while she was away, her replacement was able to lean management tasks. Susanne Schildknecht, manager at DHL Supply Chain, took 3 months off to walk the Santiago de Compostela route. When she came back, she was appointed to lead a team of 52. Arndt Rautenberg works in a consultancy firm, is preparing a sailboat cruise in the Pacific with his family.
More sabbaticals offers. According to the Handelsblatt, these managers are part of a new trend that is rising among management: “They leave the office, crazy meetings and dreadful cell phones, for two months, six months, sometimes a year. German people are coming to like sabbaticals.” The IAB labor market research institute told Planet Labor that it was hard to put numbers on this phenomenon.