Former Youngest Self-Made Billionaire Surprises Employees With Full Week Off All 700 Bumble employees were told they would have the week of June 21 off, fully paid.
By Emily Rella
Opinions expressed by BIZ Experiences contributors are their own.
As employees around the country work to acclimatize themselves back to fully in-office schedules, many are feeling the burnout that comes with readjusting to pre-pandemic work culture.
In an effort to prevent further dissatisfaction and stress among employees, dating app Bumble is granting its employees an entire bonus week of vacation.
This week, all 700 employees of the company were told they would have the week off (beginning on June 21), fully paid.
"Like everyone, our global team has had a very challenging time during the pandemic," said a spokesperson for Bumble.
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The PTO also applies to employees of Badoo, a dating app owned by Bumble that has gained mass popularity in Europe and Latin America.
The news of the office shutdowns came in a since-deleted tweet from Bumble's Head of Editorial content, Clare O'Connor, who cited that the company's CEO "correctly intuited" the "collective burnout" being faced by employees.
"In the U.S. especially, where vacation days are notoriously scarce, it feels like a big deal," O'Connor wrote in the original social media post.
Bumble is run by CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd, who made headlines in February when she became the world's youngest self-made billionaire at 31 years old after the company raised a whopping $2.2 billion upon its IPO debut at $43 a share.
Herd was also a co-founder of dating app Tinder, with which she fought a difficult lawsuit against for sexual harassment claims. She was awarded $1 million plus stock in the company as part of the settlement.
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The Bumble app is known for being progressive and feminist, as women on the app have to start the conversation once two users are matched with each other.
Bumble's decision to grant employees with extra PTO follows LinkedIn's decision to the same back in April.
"We wanted to make sure we could give them something really valuable, and what we think is most valuable right now is time for all of us to collectively walk away," LinkedIn's Chief People Officer, Teuila Hanson, said at the time.
The dating app posted a net loss of about $110 million in 2020. Shares are down about 24% year-over-year.
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