Case Study - The Walk
The Walk is an integrated marketing agency, based in Australia, working with leading brands around the world. Its co-founder and digital director, Nick Cantor shares their learnings from participating on a 4 Day Week Global pilot program and offers words of advice to those considering the move.
We began the agency in 2015, specialising in B2B technology marketing, and have since broadened our client base with work in automotive, healthcare, not-for-profit and education, as well as B2C.
The pace of change in integrated marketing is furious and the array of specialist skills required to expertly execute on different projects makes staffing a challenge. There’s never a steady “manageable” amount of work, and peaks and troughs are inevitable. This is where traditional agency burn out culture starts, where a fluctuating volume of work and priorities meets a static number of people and hours. With both myself and my co-founder, Jo Edwards, having worked in many different agencies over the years, we always had one eye on developing an agile team and progressive ways of working.
Our first solve was our Elastic Fantastic network — the trusted group of skilled specialists all over the world that formed an extension of our team. This was basically a way to leverage the gig economy, those people who wanted to work on their own terms, and we found this gave us ready access to people at the top of their game, highly expert in their niche skill whether that was illustration, particular types of code, specialist writers or digital designers. In an increasingly connected world, our team found they could get support to get just about anything done, leaving our core team to become specialists in our clients, their goals, their brands and their needs.
In 2020, as lockdowns hit Melbourne and we found the entire team working remotely, this network came even more into its own. But the impact of COVID-19 on our team was hard, as people struggled with work and personal pressures and the up-ending of normal lives. We could see the impact of COVID-19 and lockdown stress on our staff, and it came to a head with Jo suffering burnout and needing to take time out from work to recover.
To try and relieve some of the pressure, we trialled taking one afternoon off per week, and after a month we measured the impact on the business. Whilst the team had great feedback on being able to take much needed time off to manage their lives during the crazy COVID-19 times, the impact on the business was disappointingly predictable. Apparently, when you take away 10% of people's time — and you're a business that sells time — the result is an obvious 10% reduction in billings.
With that, I was inspired to bring some more craft to our next attempt.
It was toward the end of 2021 that I read about the 4 Day Week Global organisation and the work they were doing in the UK. I realised what had been missing from our attempt was any learnings from others. What others had been doing was analysing how they worked and learning from it so they could implement changes to be more efficient. They were evolving work. This sounded worth exploring.
When I heard about the pilot happening across Australia and New Zealand I immediately expressed interest and started the discussion internally. As they shared knowledge with us and commenced our training, it was rich with data and ideas about what we could do to maintain 100% productivity but with 20% less time. We trialled exercises that immediately showed the benefits of deep work versus multitasking, showing the former to be great for quality of work, and the latter woeful for productivity. And with that, we were hooked.
The next job involved training the team and getting them ready for the pilot. First, we just gave everyone time to learn. We all felt like we were working a muscle that we didn't really have, so having that time to learn through the pilot was actually a really great thing to do.
At first I saw so many issues to address in my job, but we saw mixed responses from the team about how well they identified inefficient practices in theirs. We worked through that with open, transparent communication and over time, we all began to change how we worked.
Being a pilot, we trialled changes to all sorts of things. We allowed the team to time shift (start early, finish early or start late and finish late). We trialled everyone off on the same day, people off on different days. We trialled having the day off on every single day possible. With all the changes, came numerous learnings. And over time, we each found our groove.
The hardest parts for us ultimately were two things:
Changing from selling time to selling value;
And defining objectives and key results for each person, and measuring their performance against them.
No doubt for some industries, they will face less challenges in these two areas. But those were difficult changes for us. Difficult, but completely worthwhile.
As we completed the trial we were facing a very uncertain 2023 and to be honest, I've never experienced such mixed times. But there we were, rich with learnings about how to work really well with excellent people remotely and armed with methods to evolve not just how we work but how we live. In the end we completely restructured the team and now, with our focus on delivery, everyone can work remotely, from wherever they want to be. Because for us, it's about doing great work and helping others to do the same. However you get that done.
The 4 day week, perhaps surprisingly, is not actually just about work. To maintain productivity requires something special from each person at work. And we found that the only way to maintain that, was to be living a life outside of work that fulfilled them in real terms.
Over time, we've learned how to better identify the things that fulfil us and to go towards those things. For me, it's been about deeper connections with those I love. And that includes myself. I've ramped up my fitness and started to explore places I always had on my list but never found the time for. My personal life is in order, my working life is in order. My relationships are healthier and our clients are happier.
Work needs to evolve. And with so many progressive, committed people trialling the 4 day week and contributing their findings so that people like you, the reader, can learn from them, I think you'll find it worth trialling yourself.
