Leave of essence: Spectrum Properties tries to hang on to people by letting them go for a month every five years.

• Author: Brown, Kathy
• Position: Feature

After John Tronco got married in the summer of 2001 in Augusta, Ga., he and his wife spent 18 days in Italy, hopping from the Isle of Capri to Rome, then to Florence and finally to a small beach resort on the Riviera. Returning to the United States, he spent two days unpacking gifts and moving his wife's belongings into his house in Charlotte. The couple then spent a week in Kiawah, S.C. Finally, Tronco, 30, who got full pay for all four weeks, returned to his job--where he still had three weeks of regular vacation to spread around the rest of the year.

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No, he's not a CEO or a president. He's a marketing representative for Charlotte-based Spectrum Properties Inc., a commercial real-estate company that also has offices in Raleigh, Winston-Salem, Greenville, S.C., and Charleston, S.C. Paid sabbaticals are policy at Spectrum, which leases and manages office and industrial properties. After five years, Spectrum employees get four consecutive weeks of paid leave on top of their regular vacation. After the next five years, they get another month-long, paid break, and so on for every five years they're with the company.

These sabbaticals are not a trial, flash-in-the-pan benefit. The company adopted the policy in November 1989--long before dot-coms were wooing workers with nap times, massages, M&Ms and on-site dry cleaning--and has kept it. Every one of Spectrum's 86 full-time employees--from President Darryl Dewberry to the receptionists--is sent packing once every five years to "recharge their batteries," Dewberry, 42, says. Employees must arrange the time off with their manager six months before leaving and write out a statement of purpose outlining what they plan to do. But there are no rules for how the time must be spent.

Though Tronco spent his sabbatical honeymooning, other employees have used their time off for volunteer projects, to reconnect with family members, to participate in church mission trips or to travel. "On my first sabbatical, I stayed home and landscaped my yard," says Carol King, 58, an executive assistant in Spectrum's Charlotte office. "Now that's not going to Africa and helping out the world, but it was very rejuvenating for me."

That's exactly the point, says John Boylan, 41, executive vice president and head of the Raleigh office. "We don't want someone to go take a

second job for that month to make extra money. We want people to go away and come back excited and with a higher sense of energy."

When it was Amy Perry's turn to take a sabbatical in 1998, she was determined to spend some time in a theater. A...