Survey Finds So Many Workers Are Taking PTO After A Breakup That They Think We Need 'Heartbreak Leave'
David Gyung | Shutterstock A lot of things can impact your focus and productivity at work, including how you’re feeling mentally and emotionally. It’s no surprise, then, that going through a heartbreak can really affect your work performance and attendance.
When you’ve just been through a breakup, it can feel like the world is ending and your entire future is in question. It’s a traumatic experience that many people feel like they need some time to process. One survey found that many people need time away from work after a breakup, and they actually support the creation of something called “heartbreak leave.”
Heartbreak leave would be a bit like bereavement leave, but for a breakup.
Resume builder Zety surveyed 1,020 American workers to get their thoughts on what it’s like to work after a breakup. A third of employees admitted they had previously used a sick day or PTO to take time to get back on track after a heartbreak. Even more employees than that (43%) said they knew that a breakup had in fact “negatively affected their productivity or ability to focus.”
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With numbers like these, it’s not surprising that many employees are calling for an official policy change to help them during these difficult times. 33% of workers said they thought companies should begin offering heartbreak leave, or “formal days off to recover from romantic loss.”
Heartbreak might not be a physical ailment, but it still isn’t something to take lightly.
Heartbreak leave could be compared to mental health days in the sense that some people don’t take it seriously because it doesn’t involve a physical illness. If a co-worker were sick with an acute illness, like the flu, most people wouldn’t question their need to take time off. The same can be said of more long-term illnesses, like cancer. But heartbreak isn’t that problematic, right?
Clinical psychologist Dr. Sabrina Romanoff explained that people who are going through a heartbreak often experience the grieving process, just like someone would if a loved one passed away. Furthermore, she insisted that it can cause changes to your body that “feel so distressing that people can begin to lose their hair, lose/gain a significant amount of weight, suffer from hormonal changes, and have less dopamine production.”
Relationship expert Emily Mashburn, LMHC, added that the impacts of a breakup are intense. “Emotionally, when we go through a breakup, we may be more inclined to feel feelings like rejection, hurt, and sadness,” she said. “Though it is natural to feel these emotions, it is still incredibly hard to process [them] while continuing to go about your day-to-day life.”
Although heartbreak leave might sound extreme to some, it would really help people.
A 2023 report from Lean In and McKinsey and Company found that 25% of women said that bereavement leave is considered a “top employee benefit,” and is even more desirable than parental leave and caregiver benefits.
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Workplaces are simply expected to give an employee time off when they lose someone through death. Of course, death and a breakup are not the same thing, but they both involve losing someone you care about. Why shouldn’t you get time off when going through a breakup?
ZipRecruiter career expert Sam DeMase said that offering leave for heartbreak would benefit everyone. “It benefits the employee and the employer in the long run,” DeMase said. “Rather than working through a difficult time and potentially experiencing burnout or delivering subpar work, taking time off ensures essential processing and protects the quality of your work.”
It’s easy to look at heartbreak and think it’s something that people should just be able to get over, but when has heartbreak ever felt simple? It’s considered unconventional in our culture now, but giving workers the chance to take some time off of work after a hard breakup would not only show that their employers care about them as humans, but also give them the chance to recover from something very painful.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer with a bachelor’s degree in English and Journalism who covers news, psychology, lifestyle, and human interest topics.
