Avoiding Burnout and Finding Balance

Burnout is REAL and is something that many people experience. In some way we have all seen or read about burnout in startups and tech companies over the years and Strava isn’t immune to it either. When you combine the stress of life, our various family and friend responsibilities, as well as producing a phenomenal product that millions of people use and then mix in a once in a lifetime global pandemic and, well, burnout could occur.

We went from working our standard work week with a “break” as we commuted to and from our homes to now not having a physical separation to help our minds and bodies transition to our personal life. What many have found is that the lines between work and play, office and home have become blurred. And then there is the matter of holidays or vacations. In the past year and a half, travel has lessened dramatically and in many parts of the country households weren’t allowed to mix. People weren’t seeing their families and friends and therefore taking little to no vacations or holidays, aka time away from their laptops or “office environments” to rest and reset. All mentionings point towards the increasing chance of burnout.

People teams, HR forums and conferences have begun to commiserate on the fact that they are worried about the mental health and wellbeing of their employee populations. We’ve heard these concerns directly from employees in our quarterly Engagement surveys and we’ve seen it come up in team discussions, 1:1 meetings and over email. But other than encouraging employees to take time off for themselves, we all seem to be at a loss of how to help regain the balance we once had.

Strava set out to change that standard. We asked the question of how to ensure our employees who have been working effectively nonstop for the past year and a half get some time to recharge? We came up with what we are calling our Summer Time-Off Campaign. This campaign is designed to not only encourage, but request that all employees take some extended time off throughout the remainder of the year that suits theirs and/or their families’ needs.

We ensured the campaign gave employees an equal playing field in requesting and taking the time. The items that normally define a time-off policy such as tenure, title, exemption status, or accrued PTO (paid time off) have been set aside to ensure all employees have an opportunity to take advantage of this policy. We also decided to track this time separately to make it available for all and incoming new hires.

And to help employees understand what we meant by “extended time off”, we provided an array of examples of what we thought that extended time could look like, everything from several two to three week vacations, to Summer Fridays or even every other Friday off throughout the remainder of the year.

To many people, this new program might seem drastic and the levels of stress brought about by the pandemic and life may not be present. However, we know these things have affected many of our teammates therefore we are making the conscious choice to center one of core values: balance. We cannot continue operating in such a way where time off does not feel possible for us, it isn’t scalable. There have been numerous studies that have pointed out that employees sleep better and are in better moods and have increased levels in performance for months after they come back from vacations, rests, or resets, yet we continue to see it more and more challenging for employees to feel comfortable taking time off or stepping away from their work a couple times a year.

This new way of working isn’t going to be easy to adjust to, change rarely is; however, we believe it necessary for our employees’ mental state and overall well-being to test this new program.

This year and a half has been a tough one, on all of us, regardless of your tenure at Strava. So it feels right to try and test the waters a bit and push the limits and challenge our managers and employees to do something that we feel might really make a difference between maintaining the positive balance we all want in our lives.