Stop Working 5 Days a Week
How investing in our team has led to greater success.
I bet you’re freaking out already! Why would our team not do any client work on Fridays? How much money are we losing by not invoicing clients for an entire day’s worth of work for every person on the team!?!?!
I’ve always loved this quote:
“CFO asks CEO: What happens if we spend money training our people and then they leave?
CEO: What happens if we don’t and they stay?”
The truth is, it’s an investment in our company and our team members. Like any investment, we hope to get (and have seen) a greater yield of return from what we put initially into the “account”.
works on a pretty progressive four day work week. That means Monday through Thursday we work on client work, but come Friday we reserve that time for team bonding, internal marketing needs, writing articles (like this), fun case study projects, releasing our own products, as well as personal growth and education.Setting this time aside is important for many reasons, but let’s dive deeper into a few of them.
1. Bringing in new business
You’re going to land more work and new clients by putting out incredible case studies that your team members are passionate about. We’ve had clients let us know that a specific case study project we put out there was what grabbed their attention and led them to hire us. Just a few hours on a Friday morning could land you a fantastic client for the next 3–9 months on a big project. Worthy investment? Heck yes.
2. Staying active, staying relevant
You can’t always be showing work due to NDA’s or until a project is completed. By taking time to do creative exercises and case studies, it allows us to stay fresh in the minds of our colleagues and clients. Don’t go dark for months at a time and hope for a big reveal, stay active as much as you can.
3. Stay ahead of the competition
In a digital and technological industry, it’s easy to become a dinosaur in this field. By allowing our team a dedicated time to stay on top of current and future design trends, play around with new design tools/programs, and expand their knowledge and strength sets our team is always staying ahead of the curve. Every week we become better than the last. This is important not only to best serve our clients, but personal growth is one of an employees greatest desires. Everyone wants to be better than the day they started, and here we make sure you have the ability to be better than you were last week, every week.
4. Avoiding burn out and keeping team members long term
Focusing on growth at the end of the week is a great way to recharge before the weekend. We want our team to stay focused and excited about the project they are currently working on. Getting a short break from a project you’ve already spent 32 hours on is a nice reprieve. Let your mind loose for the day, make something awesome and come back with a fresh set of eyes after the weekend.
5. It makes us happy and our families appreciate it
We like to make things. In our spare time, we often find ourselves right back in front of the computer making what we want to exist after work or on the weekends. We take Friday to essentially do the fun creative exercises we’d spend our weekends working on. By having this time reserved for “us” each week, it helps us transition “out of work mode” and into the weekend. I can speak for my wife (and I’m sure the rest of the team’s spouses would say the same) that this is greatly appreciated by our families. We get to disconnect from work completely and just enjoy quality family time together all weekend long.
6. You get to learn your team’s strengths
We get to see what each member of the team enjoys working on most and what their biggest strengths are. Perhaps you find a team member focusing on mobile app designs, particularly with a niche focus or service behind the product. Seeing this helps us determine which team member to assign to different client projects based on expertise and knowing how passionate that designer or developer will be working on something they really love.
We’re really grateful to be able to afford investing in our team this way.
I wanted to leave off with this quote from Richard Branson:
“Train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough so they don’t want to.”
