Dating app Bumble has closed all of its offices this week to allow staff to de-stress and focus on themselves.
According to reports, the company has given its 700 staff worldwide a week off from 21-27 June in order to combat workplace stress and to thank staff for their “hard work and resilience”.
In a tweet that is now unavailable, a senior Bumble employee in its New York office said that founder Whitney Wolfe Herd had made the decision because she had picked up on “collective burnout” across the organisation, which also includes the Badoo dating app.
“In the US especially, where vacation days are notoriously scarce, it feels like a big deal,” the tweet said.
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Bumble has seen its number of paid users across increase by 30% in the three months to 31 March, compared with the same period last year.
Wolfe Herd became the youngest women, at 31, to take a US start-up public. She rang the Nasdaq trading floor bell in February while carrying her 18-month-year-old son.
In April, LinkedIn gave its 15,000 employees a week off in response to surveys that showed “clear burnout” across the workforce.
In addition to its Austin, Texas headquarters, Bumble has offices in London, Barcelona and Moscow.
The pandemic has seen numerous organisations alter their working practices to give staff more control over when and how they work in an effort to tackle work-related stress and improve work-life balance.
Last week Deloitte confirmed that all of its 20,000 UK employees will be able to choose how, when and where they work, while giants including Microsoft and Unilever have been testing the concept of four-day work weeks in some markets in order to give staff more personal time.
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In 2019 the World Health Organization classified burnout as an “occupational phenomenon” and widened its definition to include feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion; increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job; and reduced professional efficacy.
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