Creating our own path to team well-being

Earlier in the year, we saw a strong trend where various companies offered an extra week off to their employees during summer in the Northern Hemisphere. This concept started an interesting discussion internally, which led us to reflect on ourselves and to make changes that could significantly impact our team’s well-being.

It has been a challenging year for everyone — especially coming out of extended lockdowns and time off is crucial to improving mental and emotional well-being. That’s when we started asking ourselves some important questions. Is one week enough for people to reinvigorate? How could we think of this more holistically? This created a fierce and valuable debate (as is always the case at SumUp!) on how we should approach this topic.

We’ve witnessed our people completely adjusting to the new scenario and ways of working for nearly two years. We saw this as an opportunity to do things differently to address our team’s long-term and short-term well-being needs and announced a collective break to help SumUppers recharge.

The SumUp Year-End Holiday is a company-wide extra paid week off from 27 to 31 December to give a very much-needed break to our teams who have worked tirelessly throughout these challenging times. This extra time off is a period for SumUppers to disconnect and enjoy it as they like, without using their annual leave allowance. The end of the year is a time that most people value as time with their beloved ones, and we want to acknowledge that.

As part of our employee well-being plan, we also launched a paid sabbatical program, Break4Me, offering all SumUppers a month-long paid leave after 3 years of working at SumUp, allowing them to combine it with other types of leave, including parental, unpaid or annual leave. Many SumUppers have already started planning and using this benefit to recharge and refresh and as an opportunity to pursue personal and professional interests — making us confident that the program addresses an essential need for long term well-being.

In addition to Break4me and SumUp Year-End Holiday, we also have a Wellness at Work programme that aims to reduce mental health stigma and promote mental well-being through connection, support and awareness. Through this programme, SumUppers have access to a licensed psychotherapist paid by SumUp, and a series of wellness sessions with leading experts to talk about coping strategies, including in-house yoga classes.

We continue to look at ways of supporting team well-being that are tailor-made for SumUp — creating what works best for us and prioritising our people’s mental health are the real recognitions for all the great work done and challenges our teams have overcome during the pandemic.

Want to see what our teams are going to do during that week? Follow our hashtag #InsideSumUp on social media and stay up-to-date with everything that happens at SumUp.

Looking to make a real difference? Join us on our mission to empower small businesses around the world. Your journey starts here: https://go.sumup.com/end-year-break