We’re proud to be part of an international pilot study in ANZ transitioning to a 4 Day Week over the next six months. Here’s why…
As one of 30 companies in Australia and New Zealand, and working with the 4 Day Week – Global ANZ Pilot Program, we’re embarking on a six-month trial to give our team a four-day week with no loss of pay, to see if our business reaps the benefits of increased productivity from happier and healthier employees.
Why are we doing this?
Three years ago, working from home for most of your work week was inconceivable. Today, it’s welcomed as the norm. Looking back, it’s clear that old ways of thinking were rigid and not made for today’s brave new world. We believe it’s the same with the 4 Day Week. 100 years ago, the traditional 5-day week was standardised and has not changed since. We believe that in 10-20 years’ time, we’ll be looking back at the 5 Day Week scratching our heads, wondering why we accepted it as the status quo.
Challenging the norms and striving for better – smarter – ways of doing things is a part of our DNA at Ink+Iris. We believe that we can achieve greater productivity, performance, wellbeing and creativity from our team and for our clients by transitioning to a 4 Day Week.
The 4 Day Week movement has been gaining momentum since 2015, when Iceland transitioned to this model with incredible results. Since then, many countries and large companies have jumped on board with their own trials, with studies showing up to 40% increase in productivity, up to 40% greater team engagement, lower attrition rates, better work/life balance, greater job satisfaction, improved wellbeing, lower stress levels and less sick leave taken. In short, people can not only do their work in 4 days, but they can do it better in 4 days. The evidence is overwhelming, and the decision decision for us was an easy one.
What does 4DW look like at Ink+Iris?
It is up to the individual companies to determine what 4DW looks like to them. For us at Ink+Iris, this means we will be closing the office in Australia on a Friday, giving our team the gift of a 3-day weekend.
In line with the global pilot program, we will be following the 100:80:100 model.
This means 100% of the pay, for 80% of the hours, with the expectation of 100% of the output. Our team will now be working a 32-hour work week rather than a 40-hour one, while maintaining the same salary.
Working four days, not five, means we’ve had to revaluate our tools, processes and even everyday language to ensure productivity is front of mind. By empowering our team to “own their days”, we’ve flipped the ownership of productivity onto them and leaned hard into new productivity hacks, tools and systems.
With an extra day to reenergise and recharge batteries, we hope to see the same positive results that other trials have shown.
What does this mean for our clients?
To make the 4DW trial successful, we need to ensure our service and quality standards are maintained, otherwise we cannot deem it a success. For our clients, this means we commit to delivering the same high-quality output, creativity and turnaround.
To ensure we can still maintain our round-the-clock service, our UK office will be inversing their 4DW to that of ours by closing on the Monday and remaining open on the Friday.
We know we have to consciously concentrate on output rather than input to fuel success. This, naturally, has a knock-on effect to our clients, where we focus on the output and value we deliver for them, rather than on time spent.
Being a presentation creative agency, we anticipate significant benefits to our team’s creativity. By gifting our team long weekends every weekend, we’ll be returning on a Monday renewed and reenergised, banishing fatigue from the past week and refreshing tired brains – something that’s particularly important in an industry like ours where we use both sides of the brain equally.
Finally, we’re also confident embarking on a four-day week will give us a competitive edge when it comes to attracting top talent in an increasingly tight labour market. For our clients, this means more talented and happier people creating better work for them.
As with anything hard that’s worth pursuing, there will be growing pains, and we welcome the challenge to recalibrate and improve as we learn. As proud 4 Day Week pioneers, we look forward to sharing more of our journey and learnings as we charge forward into this new territory.
