Six-Week Sabbatical: Strategies for ApprovalMost companies don't have a sabbatical leave policy. Among those that do, it's unpaid leave. So chances are, you'll be asking for something your employer even doesn't offer. What an opportunity! As with Fridays Off and Extra Vacation, you can craft your own sabbatical leave and make the pitch your manager. As you make your plans, consider the following random assortment of strategies and ideas before you complete your proposal. • Ask only if you've worked for your current employer at least five years. If you're not there yet, delay your plans or modify them to fit the strategies suggested in the Extra Vacation section. • Have a purpose for your sabbatical. New experiences, new learning, an opportunity to give back to the community—whatever it is, an objective provides the focus to follow through with planning, persuading your employer, and socking away the savings you'll need if your sabbatical is fully self-funded. • Time your leave to fit your employer's or your department's cycles of work, i.e., when it will be least disruptive to business operations. • Propose your sabbatical around five months before your planned departure and no fewer than three months before. • When making your request for total weeks off, use a figure that is higher than you expect to get—just as you would in negotiating a salary. To get five to six weeks away, ask for six to seven, unless... ...you've been with your employer for 10+ years. Be bolder; ask for eight weeks. That gives you lots more room to reach a compromised end point during negotiations. If you get consent to more than you wanted, confirm your preferred plans, then let your manager know you plan to be back earlier. They'll be no objections to that! • Is there a current pressing project requiring extra hours of work? Negotiate to apply “comp time” hours to your leave request. If your manager agrees, be sure get this—and other terms of your leave—in writing. • Read the Extra Vacation section. You'll add to the tactics you can draw on when requesting additional weeks off. • If necessary when building your case, make the analogy to maternity leaves: millions of employees have worked out a manageable plan to take off six weeks or more. You're presenting such a plan too, just for different yet viable reasons. (Here's another reason why a purpose is important.) • Save most of your usual paid time off in the same year you plan to take sabbatical leave. Then decide whether you'll be asking for the six weeks off to be separate from (i.e., in addition to) your vacation leave. If you want both within the same year, and your boss rejects that path, you can compromise and apply some or most (but try to avoid all) of your vacation days to your sabbatical. • If you have plans to redesign your position into job sharing and the timing works out, do that first; it will go a long way in addressing the work coverage issue if a job partner is in place. • Get your manager used to you being off-site (but productive, of course). Set up a telecommuting arrangement months before requesting your leave. • If the company climate is right, you might even position the unpaid portion of your weeks off as a cost-saving measure. Use caution and keen judgment; you don't want to set yourself to be the first to go in a round of lay-offs. Which brings us to this caveat: • Unlike FMLA, which offers job-protected leave, your sabbatical leave has no guarantee of job protection. You have to trust that your employer won’t dismiss you from your job during your extended absence. Again, get the terms of your leave in writing. A memo of agreement should suffice.
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