‘A no-brainer’: Some bosses happily giving staff Monday off along with Canada Day

TORONTO — Anyone who works Monday to Friday and is keen for a long weekend this Canada Day has likely had to do a bit of calendar juggling to cope with the ill-timed holiday.

The stat day falls on a Tuesday this year, forcing many to work an odd Monday squeezed between days off, unless they burn a vacation day to eliminate the wonky schedule.

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Some startup companies say they’re calling Monday a wash and giving staff a paid day off in order to smooth out the mid-week quirk and create a long weekend.

It might not make sense on paper, said Klarify founder Moody Abdul, but he said he believes in prioritizing employee happiness.

“It’s that, ‘if I take care of you, you’ll take care of us’ kind of mentality,” Abdul said.

Connecting the Canada Day holiday to the preceding weekend is just one way to demonstrate worker appreciation, said Abdul, whose company provides AI-driven note-taking and administrative tools to therapists.

For those in Quebec, it’s the second holiday Tuesday in a row, after Saint-Jean Baptiste Day on June 24 forced many Fête nationale celebrants to grapple with their own odd workweek.

But with Canada Day following so close behind, it’s not uncommon for Quebecers to take the whole week off between the two holidays, much the way many treat the stretch between Christmas and New Year’s.

Of course not every employer can offer such accommodations, and full-time workers with less shift leeway will have to choose to take a vacation day or just make do with an odd schedule next week.

Ani Siddique, a research assistant at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto, said he asked far in advance for Monday off in order to get ahead of colleagues with the same idea.

“I had to ask for it but I planned for things one or two months in advance,” he said.

Morad Affifi, who sat in a downtown park after a shift Friday, said the majority of his planned Canada Day festivities take place over the weekend but he, too, dipped into his vacation bank to avoid working Monday.

Suze Mason, co-founder of the digital health platform Sprout Family, said her five staff members have the Monday off and she didn’t expect the move to have much of an operational impact on her company.

Sprout Family helps co-ordinate fertility care through workplace benefits programs. She said many of its clients, including larger Canadian organizations, plan to treat Monday like a holiday.

“It felt like it was the right business decision to give our employees a day to rest and recharge, while also not having as much of a direct impact on the business,” Mason said.

Mason said extending the holiday to match that of the companies Sprout Family works with can also make it easier for staff to disconnect, knowing they aren’t missing out on anything crucial.

“Sometimes when you’re on vacation and the business is racing ahead without you, it can feel stressful,” she said.

Vineet Johnson, founder and CEO of IRegained, said he’s made it a recurring practice to bridge awkward gaps between days off when they occur.

Johnson, whose company develops neuro-rehabilitation devices, said he did the same last December when Boxing Day fell on a Thursday and otherwise would have forced people to return to work for just one day before the weekend.

“It’s an easy incentive, a no-brainer incentive,” said Johnson.

— by Nicole Thompson, with files from Natasha Baldin

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