It’s been 12 weeks – here are the results of our experiment:
I was worried about this…What would they think? Would they consider us to be under-serving their interests? Would they think we’re lazy, uncommitted, poor partners, non-producers? The answer is that there has been NO NEGATIVE CHANGE. I believe the quality of our work has increased, and our partnerships are stronger than ever. How is that possible?
Yes, we’re keeping it going…3 months is plenty of time to run an experiment like this. We’ve been through most all agency phases of “slow time” vs. “busy time” and have fared well in both conditions. There will be additional challenges ahead, but we’re ready!
Nope, and it will continue to increase. Also, we started adding new benefits that we were not able to offer prior.
We’re small - 7 people. I can’t compete with a 50% raise, but we can be much more flexible than larger companies in other ways. This is where I believe the rest of the world will be moving anyway - we may as well get in front of it. Work-life balance is mostly talk, but it’s not when you do something about the math. What is closer to balanced: 5-2 or 4-3?
Before this, we had an unlimited PTO policy, after the experiment we’ve decided on…keeping the unlimited PTO policy with a minimum of 8 work days per year mandatory PTO.
We’ll deliver for our clients, and we’ll compensate our people for the extra effort via additional time off. We’ve been taking meetings here and there on Friday (though I’ve probably only worked 5 hours total over the last 3 months on Fridays). We’re not inflexible and realize that there are concessions that need to be made when our clients are working different schedules.
In summary, our new core working arrangement is 32 hours a week (M - Th), fully remote, unlimited PTO, and it’s working really well!
