At TREIZE, we don’t seek growth at all costs; rather, we aim to do good to feel good and feel good to do good. In essence, we truly believe that it’s with a fulfilled team that prioritizes well-being that we can deliver the best to our clients and experience the most beautiful collaborations.
It’s all well and good to proclaim loudly that we aim for well-being, but how do we concretely achieve that?
We treated ourselves to a little retreat in a cabin in the spring to fully explore the question and discover new tangible ways to better embody the second part of our mission, which is to be well in order to do good.
To this day, we still don’t know whether it was the piña coladas or our collaborative workshops that made us so creative, but the good ideas were in abundance.
The team discussed everything that could be a source of well-being: the creation of new internal committees, work equipment, team bonding activities, recognition, agency visibility, employer branding, schedule and flexibility, and so on.
As a group passionate about 1001 of things (the web being one of them, but there are a thousand others), the aspect of schedule and flexibility has especially sparked the team’s interest.
THE FOUR-DAY WEEK?
As we know, the pandemic has triggered several reflections on the conventional work week. Now, the famous four-day week is no longer just a utopian concept but a model that some companies are actually adopting.
To the great surprise of Jean-François, our president, who thought he would come and drop a bomb by announcing that it could be really interesting to try the four-day week, the team quickly raised questions and cast doubt on the proposal. Everyone openly shared their views on the subject, as well as on other alternatives such as “well-being” days off, a less drastic reduction of working hours, or an increase in the number of vacation weeks.
One thing was unanimous, everyone agreed that greater schedule flexibility provides access to opportunities that we tend to overlook with a conventional workweek: spending time with family, engaging in sports, learning about a subject that passionately interests us, managing appointments, enjoying the weekend, and more.
However, a significant portion of the team also questioned whether 4 days might not currently be ideal, partly because we are passionate individuals and were afraid that, in the end, it could add extra pressure to us (despite many mechanisms in place to prevent that). At the moment, we are quite proud of our conditions (agency life without the downsides) and do not wish to risk a change unless we are certain it would be positive.
So, we agreed that the four-day week was not ideal for us.
THE FOUR AND A HALF-DAY WEEK
We assessed that in our case, to build an environment sensitive to the well-being of everyone, the four and a half-day week was the perfect fit. It’s the most realistic formula for us and places the least pressure on the team. We are a multidisciplinary team, and we need to consider all roles.
So, this is how we are embarking on this new formula: the four and a half-day week. It might be a bit less glamorous than the four-day week, we admit, but it’s better suited to our situation and the well-being of the team. The team will work less (36 hours per week), but rest assured, the working conditions have not been downgraded.
As we want to ensure we measure the impact of this change on our productivity and our clients, we are launching this venture in the form of a pilot project. Starting from June and continuing until September, our team will work four and a half days, which we like to call “summer Fridays” for now.
Summer Fridays” sounds good, but in all transparency, we hope that this measure won’t be limited to just the summer and that we have “Fall Fridays,” “Winter Fridays,” and “Spring Fridays” as well. In other words, we want the four and a half days to be a year-round practice at TREIZE.
Of course, we’ll talk to you about all of this again in the fall, whether it’s positive or negative because we want to share with you, in full transparency, the highs and lows of this project.
If you’re considering making a change in your company, feel free to reach out to us if you’d like to continue the conversation. We’d be happy to chat over a beer or coffee: info@treize.pro.
If this measure resonates with you and you’re interested in being part of the pilot project, please email us at jobs@treize.pro. We are currently looking for a Project Manager, Consulting Services.
