Paid time off lets workers focus on charitable deeds

A Xerox official says many workers return from sabbaticals with new energy.
WEBSTER, N.Y. (AP) -- Joanne Belknap has clocked 27 years assembling copiers and printers for Xerox Corp. For four months this year, the company is paying her to do a very different kind of work.
Belknap is going door-to-door soliciting funds to combat cancer, which has killed her father and three members of her husband's family since 1979.
Since 1971 -- except from 2001 to 2003, when it teetered on a financial precipice -- the office equipment maker has annually offered up to a year's paid leave to a batch of employees to work for charitable causes.
"They chose me. What a Christmas present!" exclaimed Belknap, 58, whose husband, Tom, is also a blue-collar veteran at Xerox's manufacturing hub in the Rochester suburb of Webster. Her social-service sabbatical runs from March through June.
The Xerox program is one of several at big U.S. companies that pay skilled employees to work in the nonprofit world. Among those with similar programs are American Express Co. and Providence, R.I.-based Citizens Bank.
The inspiration
At Xerox, the idea grew out of a discussion between two executives in 1970 as they traveled home from California after giving a university a fat check. Archie McCardell, Xerox's then-president, thought it "really easy to give money to the university; it really didn't pinch at all. So he asked, 'What would?'" recounted Joe Cahalan, Xerox Foundation's longtime overseer.
Xerox lets an average of 15 employees a year serve a charity for between three months and a year. All employees are eligible, not just executives. They nominate themselves, and a jury of their peers decides who gets the nod, Cahalan said.
In their absence, the chosen few "get exactly what they would get if they were working -- full salary, full benefits," he said.
Programs elsewhere
Since 1991, American Express has offered a paid sabbatical of up to six months to 10-year veterans to volunteer in their communities, doing work that has included counseling at a hospital or hospice, teaching at a local high school or college and serving meals in a homeless shelter.
Citizens Bank has offered three months of paid leave to an average of seven employees each year for the last decade to do "hands-on" public service -- which excludes fund-raising or serving on a corporate board. Like Xerox's, the program is open to employees with three years of service.
Drug maker Pfizer Inc., which donated upward of $500 million in medicines, medical care and community services last year, also began a paid-leave program enabling 18 employees to tackle AIDS or other infectious diseases in poor countries from Eastern Europe to Latin America.
A more common program at other companies might "loan" an executive to do other work -- for example, a senior researcher who spends a year at a university.
Personal causes
At Xerox, at least 80 percent of the volunteers work for causes related to adversities they or a loved one has endured, such as alcoholism, spousal abuse and physical or mental disabilities. Showing years of dedication to a specific charity -- on their own time -- is often crucial in getting selected.
The possibility that some applicants might view paid leave as a dry run for a career change is "a reason a lot of companies have decided not to do this," Cahalan said. Yet fewer than 10 of the 453 people who have taken sabbaticals from Xerox failed to return to their jobs.
"Our history says that employees who really want to do this come back and pick up where they left off, and in some intangible ways, they're probably more motivated and more loyal to the company," Cahalan said.
In addition, they return refreshed and in some cases armed "with a broader set of skills and way of thinking about things," he said.