Firms hope time off yields good behavior

Need a break from work?

A real break, not just a vacation where you spend the first week trying to stop thinking about work and the second week thinking about going back.

We're talking about some quality time away from the office - without your pager or laptop (that's right, no logging in) - where you can rejuvenate, reconnect with family, or just hang out.

Enter sabbaticals.

With the talent-starved marketplace, a growing number of American workers - from 20-somethings to senior executives - are pushing for and getting extended breaks from the rat race.

Sabbaticals can range from a few weeks to six months or longer. And more often than not, they have nothing to do with work. Tour the south of France if you'd like, or build that deck in your backyard.

The goal for most workers who take sabbaticals: to reestablish a sense of normalcy in their lives.

"We have seen a huge change in people's attitudes toward sabbaticals," says Barbara Moses, author of "The Good News About Careers: How You'll Be Working in the Next Decade" (Jossey-Bass Publishers). "They used to be something tenured professors took to recharge themselves. Increasingly they are becoming part of mainstream America's response to overwork, overcommitment, and not having a life."

No doubt giving people more time off is a big draw these days. Nearly half of Fortune magazine's 100 Best Companies to Work for in America now offer sabbaticals or similar leave programs - up 18 percent from a year ago.

Take some time, or else

Companies such as Intel Corp., Ralston Purina Co., and Netscape Communications offer sabbaticals. (In fact Intel, which has offered the perk for more than two decades, has employees on their second and third sabbaticals.) And they're not alone.

Investment house Credit Suisse First Boston just unveiled one- to three-month paid sabbaticals for workers who have been with the company at least five years. A handful of people have already been approved.

And Charles Schwab & Co. recently revamped its program, making it available to both full-time and part-time workers.

Ric Edelman, chairman of Edelman Financial Services in Fairfax, Va., feels so strongly about the power of sabbaticals, that he made them mandatory.

"If they don't take it, we kick them out," says Mr. Edelman, who grants four-week paid sabbaticals to employees after seven years at the firm - and requires that workers take them by their ninth year. "After seven years in an organization, you need to get your batteries charged - you need to get away from daily life."

The company goes so far as to disconnect employees' e-mail and forbid them from checking voice mail.

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