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Mini-sabbaticals. Adult gap years. Micro-retirement.

Extended career breaks go by many names and take many forms, from using the time between jobs to explore or taking an employer-approved leave to becoming a digital nomad or saving up for a months-long adventure.

Creating space for a reset, whether mental, physical or spiritual, is the common thread.

More companies are allowing weeks or months of paid or unpaid leave as a way to retain valued employees, according to Kira Schrabram, an assistant professor of management at the University of Washington's business school.

Seven years ago, she brought her experience researching burnout to the Sabbatical Project, an initiative founded by Harvard Business School Senior Lecturer DJ DiDonna that promotes sabbaticals as "a sacred human ritual" to which more people should have access.

Schrabram, DiDonna and University of Notre Dame Professor Emeritus Matt Bloom interviewed 50 US professionals who took an extended break from non-academic jobs.

From the responses, they identified three types of sabbaticals: working holidays that involved pursuing a passion project; "free dives" that combined exciting adventures with periods of rest; and quests undertaken by burned-out people who engaged in life-changing explorations once they had recovered sufficiently.

More than half of the interview subjects self-funded their hiatuses.

In an article for the Harvard Business Review, the researchers made a case for sabbaticals as a tool employers could use to recruit, keep and foster talented workers.