If you were to close your eyes and picture your perfect day or week off, it probably wouldn’t feature you stuck on the sofa watching Loose Women waiting for the gas engineer to arrive. Sweating profusely as you lug box after box up four flights of stairs. Or sitting anxiously in a grotty waiting room, before handing over the best part of your monthly salary for an MOT.

Such is the reality of life, though. If you’re working a 9–5, and you need to visit a business that opens 9–5, you might have to waste a day off on ‘life stuff’.

Or do you?

Enter, life leave. 

What is life leave? 

Some generous employers give their staff ‘life leave’, on top of standard types of leave for things that aren’t work but also aren’t ‘filling our cup’. Chores, basically.

Some examples of things you could take life leave for:

  • Appointments: doctor, dentist, mechanic, passport/visas, HMRC, court appearances
  • Home maintenance: leaks, break-ins, broken appliances – all that fun stuff! 
  • Wedding prep
  •  Moving house
  • Settling in a new pet (also known as pawternity leave )

Aside from the obvious ‘get stuff done, still take holiday’, what are the benefits of life leave? 

Privacy

Having the broad umbrella of ‘life leave’ means you don’t have to specify what exactly is going on in your life that you need to deal with. You don’t owe your manager or colleagues your life story, and if you don’t want to share, you shouldn’t have to. 

Being able to log on to your leave calendar and request some ‘life leave’ without having to explain why saves you from piling more anxiety onto a potentially already difficult, embarrassing or just private situation.

Protecting downtime

Life leave gives you time to get your ‘life job’ done without giving up your downtime. It means you can book out all your ‘proper’ holiday for the year without worrying that something might come up and you’ll have no paid days off left.

The employers who offer life leave know how important it is to have time to do nothing – or at least, nothing productive. They get that annual leave is (or should be) about rest. It’s time to not work.

By ringfencing a special kind of leave for life admin, employers are protecting your sacred rest time and treating it as an untouchable non-negotiable. This benefits them too – as well as grateful, well rested employees, flexible leave policies are a huge draw for talent. 

Higher productivity 

As we know, a bit of R&R is key to productivity. You can’t be in ‘go’ mode 24/7. Smart employers don’t want their staff moonlighting as a personal assistant to themselves, coming back to work after the weekend shattered and uninspired because they haven’t been able to stop.

Using tools like a leave tracker, employees can manage their time off effectively, reducing the risk of burnout while staying organised. It ensures that employees have a clear overview of their leave balance, enabling them to prioritise downtime and productivity. 

Drawbacks?

While life leave sounds like the answer to the working adult’s prayers, there are naturally potential drawbacks to consider. One of the main concerns is that life leave, while offering privacy, could lead to less transparency between employer and employee.

It is of course important that people feel they can be open about their personal lives, including why they may need time off, and this can go a long way to reducing presenteeism. But a close personal connection is not a requirement for a successful working relationship and quite frankly, it’s some people’s worst nightmare. Life leave doesn’t stop you from confiding in someone at work if you want to, it just means you don’t have to.

Another risk is that life leave might not be widely embraced, especially by managers or admin staff who could see it as an extra burden, creating inconsistencies in application. To avoid this, you need to follow best practice.

Best practices for managing life leave in the UK

To make sure life leave is fair and works for everyone, a staff leave planner can be used to ensure proper scheduling and avoid overlapping leave requests. This helps employers spot and cover any staffing gaps efficiently, allowing both employees and management to plan ahead

You need a clear policy, and you need to make sure people know about it. The policy should outline what qualifies as life leave, how much of it people get and how to ask for it. There should be no scope for individual variations in leniency among HR managers. Not asking for details helps with this, as there’s no subjective assessment of what ‘counts. 

Key takeaways

For the younger working generations – we’re talking millennials and below – life doesn’t follow the predictable and typical path of older generations and the traditional suite of leave to cover the ‘standard’ life events just isn’t cutting it anymore. 

Life leave is a crucial step forward in our shift towards more flexible work and a better work-life balance for everyone. By offering life leave, employers show that they are in touch with the reality of modern life and want to protect downtime so that people can work, live and recharge.

We think life leave is about to climb the ranks of top benefits offered by forward-thinking companies – are you offering it? 

Author – Phil Norton

Phil is the co-founder of Leave Dates, the employee annual leave planner. He loves problem-solving and making life easier for small businesses. If you book a Leave Dates demo, he will give you a warm welcome and show you everything that you need to know.