Luno long weekends - a symbol of appreciation

Today is the first of two Luno long weekends that we have planned for July; two Fridays off for Lunauts at the end of a hugely hectic but exciting last six months!

We've seen much in the press recently about companies creating opportunities for whole company leave days, with Bumble being one example; giving their team a week off last month.

And I'm all for more giving more holiday to teams! I think taking leave, especially as we are still navigating the emotional toll of this pandemic is incredibly important and actually sometimes, despite many of us still not being able to travel freely, a week actually isn't long enough to feel refreshed. So creating the culture where our teams have both a decent holiday balance, and are (strongly) encouraged to use all of their leave is vital for our wellbeing.

But what I think we all need to be mindful of (no pun intended!) is that these long weekends or weeks off aren't, as some of the headlines would lead us to believe, a simple (or singular) preventative measure for burnout. Instead, ensuring that we are creating cultures where mental fitness is seen as the starting place from which we design our experiences, rather than a nice to have, or an add on, is crucial.

When we started discussing the idea of creating additional leave days for our Lunauts, it was really important to us that we were clear about what we were trying to achieve, and how this idea aligned to our Moontality (values).

What we arrived at, after much healthy debate (and we love those at Luno!) was that these long weekends are in recognition of, and thanks for, the exceptional effort shown by our Lunauts not just over the last six months, but really for the grit and resilience shown over the last 18. They weren't, and shouldn't be, positioned as an initiative to prevent burnout, and our teams would never have accepted this as the reason even if we had tried to sell it as such!

So why not just increase the number of annual leave days? Why go to the effort to get as much of the company to have the same day off as possible?

Well, because in addition to being a symbol of appreciation, rest and relaxation is amplified when everyone is taking the same day off. No Slack noise, no emails, no meetings you have to catch up on when you're the only one taking the day off. It's a collective exhalation of breath that also supports our one mission, one team value. And judging by the Slack thread about what our Lunauts are going to do today, rest and relaxation features heavily!

But, like Bumble, not all of our Lunauts can have the day off today and this is where we wrestle with our 'One mission, one team' value. Our customer facing teams, our superheroes who provide our customers with support whenever they need it, can't all take the same day off. That wouldn't be in service of our other value of 'Customer first'. We're in financial services after all, and can't just tell our customers to hold on for 24 hours if they've got a question about their account.

In order to reconcile the two values, we worked in collaboration with our customer facing teams to come up with a solution that made sure they felt as appreciated as the rest of Luno, and could get the same time off but in a way that also supported our customers. And I think therein lies one of the biggest challenges of a scaling business - very rarely does one approach fit all anymore, as much as we would love that to be the case here!

So I'm looking forward to seeing what our Lunauts get up to on this long weekend. It's fantastic to see so many companies getting creative with how they can support their employees, and sharing our ideas allows us to all take inspiration from each other. After all, we're here to make work, work better!