The Business of Benefits: Bi-annual resets at Haven

Here’s this week’s edition of our Business of Benefits series, where we spotlight benefits that are driving value for HR leaders, digging into their design and ROI. It has been edited and condensed for clarity.

If you’re interested in talking about a workplace benefit you love for an upcoming edition, click here to get in touch. You can also reach out directly to HR Brew’s total rewards reporter, Courtney Vinopal: [email protected]

Haven, a company that runs centers incorporating childcare, workspaces, and fitness, shuts down operations for one week twice a year. These bi-annual resets, which take place in July and December, have been in place since the company was founded in 2019.

Britt Riley, Haven’s CEO and founder, said she took a page from Patagonia when considering these benefits for her staff. When she was a marketing intern with the outdoor gear company, she was struck by the positive relationship corporate leadership appeared to have with its employees.

Riley told HR Brew about how this benefit came to be, and why she believes it’s vital to Haven’s business model.

Explain the business case for this benefit.

Our bi-annual company-wide resets have been company initiatives since Haven was founded in 2019.

At Haven, we firmly believe that childcare providers are up there with brain surgeons and first responders, as they are literally shaping the minds of the next generation. I knew that if we were to ask this of them, they would also need time to breathe and reset. As we’ve grown, these windows of time (once in December and once in July) have become non-negotiables.

From the feedback we receive from parents, we know our teams are showing up at 200% five days a week. But we fully realize this is impossible to do without taking their own rest. So, we see these twice-yearly resets (on top of their standard PTO) as a paid pause where we know everyone has the time and space to refill their cups.

What level of investment does this benefit represent for your organization?

There is genuinely no price tag one can put on peace of mind. Our bi-annual breaks are built into our company’s DNA, and we know no difference.

Our resets underscore that we are investing in people: our families and our team. We are giving people time to rest their minds so they can show up as the best person possible at Haven. During their time off, we do not expect them to check in, take a phone call, email, or send a message. And, we are able to do this because leadership is also taking the time off. It’s a collective team thing because we are all collectively working toward the larger goal of making Haven the solution in childcare for modern families.

How are you measuring the ROI of this benefit?

When we look at our return on investment, we have little turnover at our Haven clubs and our staff has rated Haven a Great Place to Work three years in a row. The importance of this time off adds up and makes complete sense to me and the rest of the leadership team.

It’s really challenging to quantify someone’s peace of mind. However, by investing in our people with comprehensive benefits, we see less turnover than the industry typically does.

These benefits support retention and allow us to remain competitive when we are hiring and recruiting new staff. In the childcare area, we are often competing with caregivers and educators who are working at jobs at schools that have summers off, so this is our way of remaining competitive. In 2026, in addition to the earlier-mentioned benefits, our staff will receive 24 days of paid holiday, professional development days, and our school break closures.