Christi Dixon of Standing Partnership

Christi Dixon would be lying if she didn’t admit her company’s sabbatical program has kept her on the job. A vice president at Standing Partnership in St. Louis, Dixon has been recruited by headhunters and business acquaintances, but never gave the offers real consideration.

Standing Partnership’s 24 staff members are eligible for a two month paid sabbatical after seven years of employment. Because a three- to five-year turnover is pretty standard in the communications industry, Dixon said the program gives the firm several extra years to build relationships with its team members.

“It’s a way that Standing says, ‘Hey, I really want to invest in you and give you some refresh and recharge time,” Dixon said. “In a business that relies on creative energy and good ideas, that’s really helpful.”

Dixon is splitting her sabbatical in two, with plans to take one month in November 2009 and the second in June 2010. The first month is just for her; the second for family.

While Dixon is still finalizing her plans, she is looking into urban volunteering and perhaps even a poverty immersion. She plans to visit many of the area’s museums and take advantage of other experiences that are hard to access with kids in tow.

“It’s an opportunity for me to do some things I’ve never had the chance to do,” she said.

In June, Dixon’s kids will be out of school, and she’s planning a month of family time, enrichment activities, and at least one week-long vacation to travel and visit family.

When Dixon talks to other people about her upcoming sabbatical, she says they often want to know where she’ll be teaching or what kind of report she’ll be writing.

“They think of it as an academic sabbatical, and I explain it’s a benefit sabbatical,” she said. “People are really amazed this is truly a benefit sabbatical for you to use how you wish.”

Billie Madha and her mother left Myanmar (then Burma) in 1976, when Billie was 15. They thought they’d never see their family again. And it was a big family. Billie’s mother was one of 18 children.

More than 20 years later, on her first sabbatical with Arrow Electronics, Billie got to take her mother back to their home country. Many of her mother’s siblings and their spouses and children were waiting at the airport. It was a family reunion on a grand scale.

Billie describes this sabbatical as a “much needed event in my life.” She’d recently been through a divorce, the death of her father, and a big wake-up call on her health – cancer. She’d kept a 60-hour pace at Arrow for too long.

Sabbaticals – Billie’s been on two now – have been a respite and a light for Billie. She saved for a long time to make sure the first one – taking her mother back to Burma – could happen. And the day she returned from that first sabbatical, she started saving for her second (a long sojourn in Italy and then nesting at her home in LA), which would occur seven years later.

In return for its sabbatical offering, Arrow gets in Billie an uncommon level of dedication. “I’ve had opportunities to go work somewhere else with more money,” she says. “At the end of the day, when you slice and dice everything, there’s no other place that will give you this opportunity. It makes you want to stay.”

One week after the devastating cyclone hit Myanmar on May 2, Billie still had no information about the safety and whereabouts of her family there. In an email she sent to friends, she wrote: “My family and I have been glued to CNN getting little updates and trying to comfort each other.”

For those of you with upcoming sabbaticals who are interested in volunteering for relief efforts, making a direct impact is difficult because of the Myanmar government’s controls. Check out this blog dedicated to the country’s cyclone relief. Here’s a blog with a list of relief agencies that working on the cause. And CARE also has good information.