4DWW — Leap of faith | Part 1
How often have you found yourself thinking ‘If only I had more free time, I would finally…’? Without having done any research to back this up, my wild guess is that most of us have had these kinds of thoughts. What if you had that one extra day to do as you please! Well, this is exactly what the reality will be like in Scoro starting from July this year — with the coming of the #4DWW aka four-day work week aka 32 working hours per week!*
With this series of articles, we will be covering the expectations (this article), the first impressions (a month or so into the 4DWW) and the actual reality (over half a year into the 4DWW) in our Engineering team — how things will evolve and how they will affect the everyday life of our team members.
In Engineering, our working time is already quite self-managed. This is thanks to the fact that we trust our Scorers (the people working in Scoro) to know best when, why and how to do the tasks at hand. Structured and proactive — not reactive — approach to working, whenever possible.
Our people are expecting an array of good things to happen after implementing the 4DWW. Some see it as an opportunity to run most of their errands on that extra free day. Some simply hope to enjoy a longer walk in the park. Work out when the gyms are less crowded. Go fishing. Read a book or four. Just sleep until noon after playing computer games all night. Spend more time with the family and the kids — what could be more awesome than being there when your kid takes their first steps (or, let’s be honest, selfishly enjoying a break from them while they are at kindergarten or school). Take that flower arrangement class or that new language/tech course that you’ve been thinking about for a while. So many expectations, so many plans that the 4DWW will make possible.
‘Pure awesomeness,’ you think! And right you are, but there are also some concerns and issues lurking in the way of that said awesomeness.
So upping your day-to-day efficiency by 20% sounds like quite a challenge. But the correct mindset would actually be — not to drop your weekly efficiency by 20% while spending less time on work. In the Engineering team, this can be achieved by introducing new automations, enhancing existing ones, removing redundant/repetitive tasks that give little to no value in the long run, and critically observing what your time is spent on.
We should also strive not to have meetings about issues and topics that can be easily tackled with async meetings, by adding notes by specific deadlines and acting upon them.
This may come as a surprise to some, but engineers are actually quite social people. So some are concerned that cutting meetings and spending less time in the office can hurt the team spirit. People who are used to chit-chatting in the kitchen may now find themselves hanging there alone, while most of us are in the flow state and really focused on work. Then again, that free Friday can be used for (extra) team events or even for recovering from the Thursday night team events (yes, we do like to have a good time!).
Scoro has a very good working culture. So this change is possible largely thanks to the fact that the people in Scoro have the same mindset.
Friends and family, who are aware of this venture, are mostly really happy for us, the Scorers. I bet they also envy us quite a bit. Of course, there are some skeptics as well who think that this 4DWW is not sustainable in the long run. This all remains to be seen, but in any case, we are quite certain that working four days a week will be the new norm in a few years and soon everyone will be jumping on that bandwagon. After tasting the benefits of this new reality, I imagine it would be quite hard to switch back to a 5DWW.
There has been quite a lot of talk about trialing the 4DWW, but we have not heard much insight from the participants themselves. We are quite confident that the 4DWW will be a success AND become mainstream in the not too distant future, but this requires full commitment from us all. A leap of faith for both — Scoro and the Scorers.
* This amounts to roughly 40 extra free days per year for the people of Scoro as some team events will still be held on Fridays. But hey, it’s still more than a month’s worth!
If automations and working in the most optimal way is something that speaks to you, take a leap of faith and check out our open positions at https://www.scoro.com/careers/.
