Inside the Australian company that has a four-day working week with 10am starts – and profit has TRIPLED
- Kath Blackham’s digital marketing company Versa has four-day weeks
- Her 55 employees get Wednesdays off to help retain staff and ease stress
- In the past year, Versa’s profit has almost tripled, according to Blackham
A marketing boss has given her employees every Wednesday off to make them happier and healthier.
Kath Blackham, CEO of digital marketing agency Versa, came up with the idea last April to stop staff quitting for cushier jobs with clients.
The company’s offices in Sydney, Melbourne and Singapore close on Wednesdays – although staff can still go in if they need to get something done.
Kath Blackham (centre), CEO of digital marketing agency Versa, has given her employees every Wednesday off to make them happier and healthier
Each employee has a working week of only 37.5 hours, with days starting at 10am.
The system was supposed to be trialled for a month but it worked so well Ms Blackham has kept it.
In the past year, Versa’s revenue has grown 46 per cent and and profit has almost tripled.
In an interview with Business Insider, Blackham said her four-day regime has contributed towards the success.
‘People have become more efficient, we’ve got better staff retention, there’s less work that needs to be redone and fewer people needed to be replaced and briefed as a result,’ she said.
Ms Blackham said she chose Wednesday because she didn’t want her 55 employees to ‘write themselves off’ over a long weekend.
‘They can hang up the washing and go grocery shopping so on the weekend they can spend time with their family and have a proper break. It just makes people so much happier and healthier,’ she said.
Ms Blackham’s said she is renowned for coming up with new working ideas.
The company’s offices in Sydney, Melbourne and Singapore close on Wednesdays – although staff (pictured) can still go in if they need to get something done
Ms Blackham said she chose Wednesday because she didn’t want her 55 employees to ‘write themselves off’ over a long weekend. Pictured: The Versa office
She asks her team to go for a ten-minute walk every day at 3pm to get into the fresh air and also asks employees to say something they are grateful for each morning.
‘I know sounds a little kumbaya – but again it’s to help people kickstart their day,’ she said.
Another idea to make everyone do yoga was less popular and has been scrapped.
Ms Blackham was not the first boss to adopt the four-day working week.
The 250 staff at Perpetual Guardian, an Auckland-based financial services firm, get an extra day off after a successful trial over March and April last year.
Company founder Andrew Barnes said there is ‘no downside’ to the new system after workers were shown to have reaped the benefits from the extra downtime.
According to a panel of academics who studied the effects on Perpetual Guardian’s employees, workers showed lower stress levels, higher levels of job satisfaction and an improved sense of work-life balance.
‘For us, this is about our company getting improved productivity from greater workplace efficiencies… there’s no downside for us,’ Barnes said.
‘The right attitude is a requirement to make it work – everyone has to be committed and take it seriously for us to create a viable long-term model for our business.’
Perpetual Guardian CEO Andrew Barnes (pictured) said there were ‘no downsides’ to the four-day week