This week, the leader of the United Arab Emirates announced and creative and ambitious plan to spur economic development: people working in the public sector can take a year-long leave from their jobs to start a business.
Over the year, employees get half their salary and the chance to retain their jobs while creating their business, the newspaper Gulf News reported.
Some people will read this and think, “That won’t work here” or, “We can’t do that.” I get it.
But this kind of creativity can and will absolutely pay dividends to the country.
I’ve worked for companies that offered a sabbatical. One in particular let employees with five years at the company take six months off to do — whatever! Employees received full benefits and pay for the six months. There are many examples of companies that encourage and support sabbaticals and they report employees returning to work refreshed and in many instances, bringing back new business ideas to implement at the company.
With fewer and fewer people doing more and more work at each company across every industry, a sabbatical may seem like a tough sell.
But the nature of work has without a doubt changed over the last two-plus years and that change shows no signs of slowing.
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