After more than 15 years in HR, most recently as the chief people officer at Vice, Daisy Auger-Domínguez was tapped out.
In a leaked internal memo announcing her departure from the media outlet last August, Auger-Domínguez said she was ready for what she called a “radical sabbatical.” She has since publicly addressed her sabbatical on LinkedIn, attributing the need for R&R after leading Vice through the Covid-19 pandemic.
She’s not alone in her exhaustion: 95% of global HR leaders surveyed by UK-based accounting, payroll, and payment system provider Sage said their job is “too much work,” while 91% described the last few years as challenging and 84% said they’re stressed on a regular basis.
Auger-Domínguez told HR Brew about the roller-coaster that led to her taking a sabbatical, how she has spent her time off, and her advice for HR pros considering doing the same.
Her journey. When Auger-Domínguez joined Vice as CPO in May 2020, it was her first time in the C-suite, and an especially tumultuous time for HR.
“I joined Vice right at the beginning of the pandemic, two weeks before George Floyd was murdered,” she said, when she spoke to HR Brew in September. “That was what my entire three years at Vice looked like from beginning to end. It was chaos…financial, leadership, [and] Covid-related. It was messy returns to office. It was creating policies and practices that no one had ever seen before.”
She extended her original two-year contract to May 2023 to see her team and organization through a planned sale. Antenna Group’s acquisition of Vice fell through in late 2022. As the events of the previous few years were weighing on her, and she said, “‘That’s it. My contract ends May 1. I’m done.’”
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How it’s going. When HR Brew caught up with Auger-Domínguez in November, she shared how she’s spending her sabbatical.
Since sharing the news of her break on LinkedIn, Auger-Domínguez said she’s been overwhelmed with positivity from fellow HR leaders. Some, she said, even shared that they had experienced stigma about taking a sabbatical.
In addition to spending time with her family, she has been focusing on her professional development—attending conferences including the Omega Institute’s Women & Power and BetterUp’s Uplift summit for CHROs and CXOs—as well as her mental health, going on a Tuscan yoga retreat with her husband. She’s also working on a book about her experience as a people leader dealing with burnout.
“This time in between jobs, it’s magical. Use it as your space, and [you] may have to confront things that you have never wanted to confront,” Auger-Domínguez said.
Her advice to any HR pros considering taking time off: “strip away the images in [your] head of what we think we’re supposed to be doing or earning.”
“Listen to the signals that you’ve ignored…whether it’s two weeks, six weeks, or six months, a sabbatical can be time used to focus on all of that,” she said. “Give this time to yourself as much as you can, because the benefits are so incredibly rewarding, and we don’t get these moments all the time.”