Sabbaticals: More Professionals Tune Into Trend of Dropping Out

What’s the latest “baby boomer” status symbol? Consider the empty desk calendar.

Although their numbers still may be small, there’s no question that more and more boomers--as they edge closer to, or pass beyond, 40--are taking sabbaticals, waving goodby to corporate life, 60-hour weeks, and switching temporarily to slower tracks.

Accustomed to measuring self-esteem through job title and satisfaction, many are taking career risks by dropping out and exploring new territories in a quest for personal satisfaction.

They might be fighting burnout, or more likely they’re stalled at career plateaus and reassessing their goals. And in the meantime, they’re getting back to basics, traveling, learning new skills, doing good works in the community and seizing once-in-a-lifetime opportunities.

Want examples? How about a bank operations manager who spends three months on an Indian reservation learning Navajo rug weaving? Or a Washington lawyer who drops out and moves his family to Austria for six months? A museum director who plans a year in Italy to study ruins and complete a book?

“It’s an awakening that happens in your 30s and 40s when you realize that there is life outside of work,” says Bonnie Miller Rubin, author of “Time Out,” a comprehensive book offering case histories of sabbaticals and practical advice for those considering the option.

In interviews with 75 people who have taken sabbaticals, she discovered that “after years of running faster, jumping higher and winning through intimidation, people were talking about balance and perspective.”

Michael Kinsley, editor of the New Republic who is now on a seven-month sabbatical in London working at the Economist, says: “American capitalism should restructure itself so that more people could do this kind of thing. It’s very healthy to have a change of pace.”

But according to U.S. Department of Labor statistics, only about 13% of America’s corporations offer sabbaticals, long a perk of academic life for tenured professors. Among them: IBM, Xerox, Wells Fargo, Time Inc., McDonald’s and Apple Computer.

But as the demographics of the work force change, with men and women demanding greater flexibility in hours and benefits, more companies in competitive fields are considering offering wider opportunities to attract and keep the most talented workers.

Margaret Meiers, an analyst for Catalyst, a group that studies work and family issues, says: “More companies are offering personal leaves of absence, but one of the concerns I’ve heard from companies is that they want to provide flexibility for family reasons and are concerned about the equity of doing so if they don’t provide leaves for other personal reasons.”

Some old-line firms and their senior managers complain that all this is just another narcissistic me-first attitude prevalent among the boomer generation. Nancy Russell, manager of information services for the American Society for Personnel Administration, observes that “it is not especially popular among management. . . . It may backfire in some companies.”

Still, there are some risk-free sabbaticals, including fellowships and academic leaves.

Switching Gears

Robert Bergman, who became director of the Walters Art Gallery eight years ago after teaching art history at Harvard, admits: “I was riding on a different track, and when I switched gears I was naive to think I might be able to pursue scholarship.”

In September, however, the 43-year-old director will leave for a nine-month sabbatical in Italy, where he plans to study ruins of medieval palaces and finish writing a book. “I can’t squander my scholarly training nor should the Walters seek a scholar as director and then create a situation in which it’s impossible to maintain scholarly traditions.” He adds, “I’m doing this to renew myself.”

Among the companies that offer structured sabbaticals, IBM recently announced an expansion of its programs--offering up to three years for personal leave with benefits. Employees who leave must be available to work part-time the second and third years and aren’t guaranteed a job at the same level if they return after the second year.

‘Open to Interpretation’

On any given day, 2,000 employees out of a work force of 228,000 (IBM is the fourth-largest U.S. employer) are on leave. “Three-quarters of those on leave are women, primarily staying home to take care of children,” says IBM spokesman Michael Shore. And though most of the rest are on family-care or social service leaves, there is a category for “once-in-a-lifetime opportunities.”

“It is open to interpretation,” Shore explains. “If someone says to a manager, ‘I want to go water-skiing in Tahiti for six months,’ probably that wouldn’t qualify. But if a person says, ‘I have an opportunity to do special research,’ that would be more amenable.”

But that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity--often with reduced salary and benefits--is one that few employees can afford to take. However, Rubin found that more than 90% of those on sabbatical had found creative ways to finance their own leaves and had made personal sacrifices to fulfill their dreams.

Her own story is as good a case history as any. As a feature writer for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Rubin faced constant deadline pressures and began resenting the pace. “I think it’s a hollowness or emptiness. It’s doing things that used to excite you and suddenly leave you feeling empty. . . . You just don’t feel you can get yourself up to do it one more time.”

Rubin discovered that her architect husband David was also receptive to change, suffering from “growing disenchantment and a feeling of being under-utilized, unappreciated, and lost in the shuffle of a big firm.” So they went off with their 5-year-old child to live on a kibbutz in Israel, followed by two months of traveling in Europe.

“I felt I had been living a script my whole life,” she says, “but on this trip there was an open-ended quality.”

Traveling is a frequent choice for sabbaticals, especially among lawyers, and top law firms have long been innovative in the area of personal leaves.

Arnold and Porter in Washington has been offering partially paid sabbaticals to long-term employees for 15 years. Only partners are eligible for six-month, half-paid leaves. They must have been at the firm for at least seven years after making partner, which puts them, theoretically, around age 40.

Jim Jones, managing partner at the firm, took a six-month sabbatical in 1985 and moved his family to Salzburg, Austria, which they treated as a base for extensive travel.

When he returned, he felt “something of a culture shock,” but admits, “It certainly does help you keep things in perspective. It’s good to have an opportunity to step back and take stock of where you’re going.”

Some companies offer risk-free sabbaticals. Almost 17 years ago, Xerox introduced a program that allows workers to structure their own projects doing social service work for three months to a year without sacrificing pay and benefits.

So far, almost 400 Xerox employees have benefitted from the highly competitive program, which annually accepts just 12 to 15 of the more than 100 who apply. Among other endeavors, the chosen few have staffed AIDS clinics, worked with literacy programs and in drug rehabilitation centers.

Geralyn Volk, an account representative with Xerox in Wilmington, Del., recently returned to work after a year in San Francisco working as a marketing consultant for Lighthouse for the Blind. “I feel loyalty to Xerox because they allowed me to take a sabbatical and do something I was strictly interested in and I wasn’t making dollars for the bottom line.”

Volk is 25 but has a pragmatic view. “For me, it was a very easy and rewarding way to get management experience instead of going up the ladder. I was responsible for staffing and budgeting for a five-year operational plan and typically it takes several years to get exposed to that.”

For the most part, those who take sabbaticals rarely detour much off the career track. Many of those interviewed for Rubin’s book returned to comparable, if not better, jobs. “They were risk takers, and they were viewed by their bosses as risk takers, which usually helped their careers,” she says.

Rubin, 37, returned to her old job but was soon offered a job as features editor of the Gary (Ind.) Post-Tribune. She is now on maternity leave with her second child.

Her perspective remains forever changed. “I really know a sabbatical isn’t for everyone. It’s just another option for certain people and it was right for me. I think the idea of a job is not the be-all or end-all for us . . . To me there is nothing sadder than hearing older people say, ‘For our 50th anniversary, we’re going to go to Hawaii.’ I want to say, ‘Where’s it written you’re both going to be here?’ Why do we have to wait for that magic number? I say do it now. No one on their deathbed ever says they wish they had spent more time at the office.”