Citigroup to offer workers a 12-week sabbatical amid Covid-19 pandemic

Citigroup will soon offer workers the ability to take a 12-week sabbatical as part of a bevy of new employee perks in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

Staffers also will be able to buy as many as five extra vacation days annually starting next year, and the bank is debuting a program that will allow employees to work pro bono with a charitable organization for as much as four weeks while still receiving 100 per cent of their base pay.

The new perks are a byproduct of months of meetings among the firm’s top human resources professionals to discuss what work would look like after the pandemic subsides, said Diane Arber, who leads human resources for the bank’s institutional clients group.

“So here we are now all working from home and being extremely productive — it really gave us time to pause and think about what should we be doing differently for the employees,” she said. 

“People just sometimes need a break, and they don’t want to just stop their career.”