Bumble closes offices worldwide to allow 700 'burnt out' workers time to ...

Bumble has closed its offices for a week-long 'much-needed break' to give 'burnt out' staff some offline time to de-stress and 'focus on themselves'.

Some 700 world-wide staff have been given time off in an effort to combat workplace stress after business boomed amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Founder Whitney Wolfe Herd, 31, made the decision to shut up shop temporarily 'having correctly intuited our collective burnout', one senior executive wrote on Twitter.

Bumble announced the move back in April when a spokesman said: 'We recently announced that all Bumble employees will have a paid, fully offline one-week vacation in June.'

In a hectic year for the company Mrs Wolfe Herd became the youngest woman, at 31, to take a company public in the US when she oversaw its stock market debut in February.

The number of paid users on Bumble and its parent site Badoo rose by 30 per cent in the three months to March 31, compared with the same period the year before, as bored Britons whiled away the hours during lockdown.

Bumble's head of editorial content, Clare O'Connor, praised Mrs Wolfe Herd's decision to take 'a much-needed break' in a now-deleted Tweet.

On Monday, she wrote: '@WhitWolfeHerd gave all 700ish of us a paid week off, having correctly intuited our collective burnout.

'In the U.S. especially, where vacation days are notoriously scarce, it feels like a big deal.'

On average in the US workers are granted up to 10 days annual leave. 

The World Health Organisation defines burnout as an 'occupational phenomenon' caused by 'chronic workplace stress'.

Bumble spokeswoman Rosanna Sacks has confirmed the week-long break.

She said: 'Like everyone, our global team has had a very challenging time during the pandemic.

'As vaccination rates have increased and restriction have begun to ease, we wanted to give our teams around the world an opportunity to shut off and focus on themselves for a week.'

Bumble staff will be back at work from 28 June.

Mrs Wolfe Herd founded the female-empowering dating app in 2014, following her departure from Tinder over claims of sexual discrimination and harassment from male co-founders.

The married mother-of-one was one of five co-founders of Tinder, but quit the start-up company in 2014 and sued fellow partners Sean Rad and her ex-lover Justin Mateen for sexual harassment.

This year she rang the Nasdaq bell with her 18-month-old baby son in her arms and addressed the crowd saying she wanted to make the internet a 'kinder, more accountable place'.

Bumble is not the only workplace suffering from burnout because of added pressures put on by the pandemic.

Earlier this year a group of young bankers at Goldman Sachs threatened to quit unless working conditions improved. They claimed to work an average of 95 hours each week, with just five hours sleep every night.

A spokeswoman for the investment bank said at the time: 'A year into Covid, people are understandably quite stretched, and that's why we are listening to their concerns and taking multiple steps to address them.' 

At Tinder, Mrs Wolfe Herd claimed her co-founder Mateen became 'verbally controlling and abusive' after their on-off on romance ended, and that she was called a 'slut' and a 'liar'. The case was settled by Tinder.

The fall-out from that legal battle drove workaholic Mrs Wolfe Herd - who says she wakes up every two hours in the night to check her emails - to create Bumble with the tag line 'by women, for women'.

The app only allows female members to make the first approach to prospective dates, and promotes itself as a place where women are safe and empowered, and where harassment is rigorously policed.

In 2019, Blackstone paid about $3 billion to acquire a majority stake in MagicLab, which owned the Bumble and Badoo apps at the time, from founder Andrey Andreev. Mrs Wolfe Herd was named Bumble's chief executive officer after the deal. 

Mrs Wolfe Herd is now married to Texas oil heir Michael Herd, has a one-year-old son called Bobby Lee Herd II and enjoys an luxury jet set lifestyle which she shares with her 143,000 followers on Instagram.

Pre-coronavirus highlights included her luxurious 30th birthday party in Capri, Italy, where she was pictured wearing a custom Giambattista Valli dress estimated to be worth $10,000.

She married her husband in opulent fashion in Italy's Positano back in 2017 and her bevy of A-list friends, including Priyanka Chopra and Serena Williams, have become involved in Bumble.

Mrs Wolfe Herd's firm celebrated a stellar first-day trading performance on Wall Street, with shares soaring nearly 80 per cent on their stock market debut.

Shares started trading at $76 on the Nasdaq – considerably higher than the $43 which the company had sold shares to public investors the night before.

Bumble operates two major apps, Bumble and Badoo, which touts over 40 million monthly active users worldwide.

Bumble plans to use the $2.2 billion proceeds from the IPO to pay off debt, fund international growth, and pursue acquisitions.

Wolfe Herd took to Instagram to mark the occasion, writing: 'Anyone going through a setback, low point, or rough patch.

'To anyone who feels disempowered in their relationships — or who's had the courage to make the first move into healthier ones. Today is for you. This is the outcome of starting over again when it feels like the end.

'It's a testament to new beginnings, new paradigms, and new norms. Today has shown that barriers can be broken when we believe in a better way.

'@Bumble is the outcome of a fiercely dedicated team who've worked tremendously hard to show that women can, should, and will make the first move.

'When relationships are better for women, they're better for everyone.'

Mrs Wolfe Herd was born in Salt Lake

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