The mortgage sector has charters, retreats and webinars. What it doesn't have is a formal recovery policy
Every year for the past five years, the Mortgage Industry Mental Health Charter (MIMHC) has surveyed the sector on broker burnout. There have been small improvements, but burnout remains a persistent issue.
The MIMHC 2025 survey found that roughly one in five mortgage professionals still rate their mental wellbeing as poor or of concern. Fifty-nine per cent of respondents said they worked more than 45 hours a week.
Different strategies have been explored to address broker burnout. There are charters, retreats, webinars, and mental health first aiders. What there isn’t is a formal policy for extended recovery.
Where the idea comes from
The concept hasn’t emerged from nowhere. In academia, extended leave has been standard practice for decades. In recent years, the corporate sector has begun to follow the same logic, particularly in technology.
Intel has run a formal sabbatical program for more than four decades. Its turnover rate has held at 5.6% since 2021, which is less than half the 13.2% industry average. On its website, Intel says that sabbaticals are among the company’s most popular benefits. Eligible employees can take four weeks off after four years of service or eight weeks off after seven years with the company.
The number of workers taking sabbaticals doubled – from 3.3% in January 2019 to 6.7% in January 2024. But uptake remains low. Only 14% of US companies offer sabbaticals, according to Mercer data. In the UK, formal policies are rarer still.
What the research says
Is a sabbatical the answer for broker burnout? Jason Berry, co-founder of the MIMHC and group sales director at Crystal Specialist Finance, says the honest answer is: not on its own.
“Awareness has undoubtedly improved, but awareness alone doesn’t change behaviour,” Berry says. “I don’t believe the absence of formal sabbatical policies is the biggest issue. The mortgage industry is made up largely of smaller businesses and self-employed advisers where extended paid leave can be financially difficult to support.”
DJ DiDonna is a senior lecturer in entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School and founder of The Sabbatical Project. He is also author of Big Time Off. Writing in the Harvard Business Review, DiDonna argues that extended leave improves organisations in three ways:
- It sharpens performance through better knowledge documentation and talent retention
- It builds operational resilience
- It drives innovation
His research, conducted with academics at the University of Notre Dame and the University of Washington, challenges the most common employer fear. Those who do not return after a sabbatical would likely have left anyway, DiDonna told HRD US in May. The sabbatical does not cause attrition; it simply confirms what was already coming.
Kira Schabram, assistant professor of management at the University of Washington and head of research at The Sabbatical Project, draws a sharp distinction between sabbaticals and holidays.
“People come back from a vacation restored,” Schabram told HRD in that same article. “Their energy is recovered, but they go back to the same job with the same attitude. There’s really a degree of transformation that we see coming from a sabbatical that you wouldn’t see from a vacation.”
The broker burnout reality
Berry’s view on sabbaticals isn’t about the principle. It’s about the structure of the industry.
“For many self-employed brokers, taking three months away simply isn’t realistic,” he says. “Their clients expect continuity, cases continue to progress and income often stops if they stop working.”
The professionals who most need extended recovery are also those for whom a traditional sabbatical model is hardest to execute. Those running their own books, managing every client relationship, with no team beneath them – they’re the ones who face the steepest structural barrier.
Recovery, Berry says, should become a habit. “Time out can be far more practical when built into the working year,” he says. “It might mean properly disconnecting during annual leave, protecting evenings and weekends, or scheduling regular wellbeing days.” Building trusted relationships with colleagues who can provide cover is another practical step.
Some firms are already testing structural solutions. Berry points to buddy systems and team-based approaches that help advisers manage stress before it becomes burnout.
“Recovery doesn’t have to mean disappearing for months,” he says. “It means creating space to recharge before stress becomes burnout.”
What firms should do first
For larger mortgage operations, the structural barriers are lower. Networks, directly authorised firms, and aggregators all have the cover and operational depth that self-employed advisers lack. The question is less whether a sabbatical policy is feasible and more whether anyone has decided to prioritise it.
Berry’s advice to any firm considering it is grounding. “My first question would be: what problem are you trying to solve?” he says. “If a sabbatical policy is simply being introduced because it sounds attractive, it risks becoming an underused benefit. It has to be part of a wider wellbeing strategy to become genuinely valuable.”
He sets out a clear sequence. “Before introducing any policy, firms should understand the pressures their people are experiencing, involve employees in designing the approach and ensure there is appropriate client cover and operational resilience. They should also make eligibility transparent and remove any stigma around taking extended leave.”
Most importantly, he says, don’t measure success by uptake. “Organisations shouldn’t judge success by how many people take sabbaticals. Success should be measured by improvements in wellbeing, engagement, retention and sustainable performance.”
If you're considering a sabbatical policy,
here's where to start
Five steps firms should work through before committing
1. Understand the pressures
Map what your people are already experiencing
2. Involve employees
Design the approach with them, not for them
3. Ensure adequate cover
Client continuity and operational resilience must be in place
4. Make eligibility transparent
Clear criteria, applied consistently across the firm
5. Remove the stigma
Normalise taking extended leave across all levels
Measure wellbeing, not uptake
Track improvements in engagement, retention and sustainable performance
Source: Jason Berry, co-founder, Mortgage Industry Mental Health Charter (MIMHC) and Group Sales Director, Crystal Specialist Finance
The real question for broker burnout
The MIMHC’s annual surveys portray an industry that cares about the problem but has not yet found an answer that scales.
Berry puts it plainly: “Ultimately, creating an environment where people don’t regularly reach exhaustion is a better outcome than relying on extended leave to recover from it.”
Sabbaticals may not be the mortgage sector’s answer. But the research behind them – on recovery, resilience, and what sustainable wellbeing for mortgage professionals requires – almost certainly is.
The Mortgage Industry Mental Health and Wellbeing Survey 2026 launched in July. Have your say by completing the survey
