Holiday high: Gap travellers come back motivated

Not so long ago, corporate types would label you a hippy if you suggested leaving your job to travel. Today, employers encourage staff to take time off to see the world. Companies want to recruit and retain well-rounded, globally aware people. To do this, companies are offering employees a variety of paid and unpaid ways to travel.

Clearly it makes sense for travel companies to encourage staff to get away. Jessica Potter, offline marketing manager for Travelbag, says: “We find a lot of value in employees who have travelled. They can advise customers because they have been there and done that. After people have worked here for three years, they can take a sabbatical of three months. They can do that every two years and are guaranteed a job when they get back.”

Big business is also getting in on the act. Keith Dugdale, director of recruitment for the professional services firm KPMG — which offers staff unpaid career breaks of up to a year — says: “This generation is very keen on international opportunities. If we are to attract and retain the top talent we have to offer more.”

Dugdale says that gap travellers come back refreshed, motivated and more committed to their careers. Often, they also have improved skills and more self-confidence.

“We need to incorporate the notion of the permanent gapper into business life. The great thing for us is that it feeds into our business strategy — we want people with international experience.”

Sarah Churchill, head of diversity and graduate recruitment at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), agrees that people will want to take time off throughout their lives — between school and university, between university and career, and within their careers. One scheme that PwC offers employees is the opportunity to spend six to 12 months working with the charity Voluntary Services Overseas (VSO). “Lots of people want to use their business skills to give something back,” Churchill says. All employees are offered breaks of up to a year, whether they want to do charity work or not.

Another professional services firm, Deloitte, also offers gap-travel options, including the scholar scheme for school leavers, who work for the company for seven months between school and university on 75 per cent of the graduate starting salary, followed by a £1,500 travel bursary. They then receive a bursary while at university in the hope that they will return and join the company’s graduate programme.

And it’s not just the big corporations doing it. Andrew Main Wilson, chief operating officer at the Institute of Directors (IOD), says that it offers staff an extra two weeks’ paid holiday every five years. “We encourage people to take three to four weeks off and experience the joys of travelling long-haul. It is a good staff-retention initiative. We’ve had good take-up and the feedback has been fantastic.”

Although the IOD does not have an official career-break scheme, it does its “level best” to re-recruit people who leave to travel for longer periods.

But for most employees of companies with a positive approach to travel, it is not simply a case of buying a long-haul ticket and scampering. Claire Mann, 33, human resources officer at RM, an IT company, had to put a lot of preparation into going away. Mann had been with RM for five years when she took three months’ unpaid leave to work in an Aids hospice and orphanage in Tanzania.

“I looked at my project work to see whether I could justify a 12-week gap and made sure that none of my projects was adversely affected. I put a lot of thought into it and did a lot of planning. My role wasn’t covered but my colleagues were fantastic,” she says.

But it was all worth it. Mann says that the trip “taught me a huge amount and made me very resourceful. I came back with a new zest for life and feeling very lucky. At work I have a new perspective on things — I am hugely refreshed and more motivated.”