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After encouraging "slow weeks" once a quarter to prevent burnout early in the pandemic, an employer now uses them for valuable L&D time and says they actually improve employees' output.

Initially, the idea of slowing down the pace of work had a "little bit of a connotation against it", but one of the unexpected side-effects of the initiative is a "honeymoon period" of elevated productivity in the wake of each event, says Who Gives A Crap vice president of people and culture Ellie Smith.

"It doesn't have quite the same ring to it, but it probably should be called 'intentional week' if we were to evolve it now," Smith tells HR Daily.

"[At the] beginning of the pandemic, people were just sprinting 24/7, we just wanted them to take a minute and take a beat, and so 'slow' really worked for us at the beginning as a prompt...