Marketing agencies have long been known for their hectic work weeks and exhausting workloads. But local agency, Redback Solutions, have found a solution to stay productive while reducing the workload.

Back in May the company embraced a No Work Wednesday policy, as a result of noticing the overall productivity shift that would often roll around by a Friday afternoon.

After five days of non-stop website coding, content creation and digital marketing strategy development, the team often became fatigued.

A typical 7.5 hour day also limited the amount of deep-dive tasks each employee could tackle between their morning coffee and heading home. It was time for change.

So, while you’re likely to find Redback Solutions Managing Director, Dave Eddy, in the office from 5am-5pm on any given day, he despised the thought of making his team work overtime.

“There’s nothing worse than feeling like you’ve created a stressful work environment for your people,” Dave said.

“We’re hoping this approach will make our team members more creative, energetic and effective for our clients.”

For now, this model is still in trial mode. As always, productivity for their clients is paramount, so its permanency relies on each team member keeping up the same quality and quantity of work as before.

“Redback supports around 600 clients and the team juggles over 100 projects at any given time, so we really had to think this change through before pulling the trigger,” he said.

As for Redback’s team at large, the response to the four-day work week has been positive.

Redback Solutions Account Manager, Jazz Andrews, said the four-day work week has allowed for more productivity and time to enjoy the time off.

“With fewer workdays, I’ve found it useful to make a list of solid deliverables each day and to work as hard and fast as possible to make sure I achieve them – to really push myself. If I start feeling overwhelmed by the amount of work on my plate, I always know that I’ve only got to power through two days of super productivity before I get the change to unwind,” Jazz said.

Furthermore, Digital Content Coordinator, Maddi Devoy, said that despite the fact Redback are still trialling this method, she believes it would be great to see more local businesses try it out too.

“I think as we all adjust to it, it will be really beneficial to create a better work/life balance. I know this arrangement wouldn’t work for all businesses, but if they have the capacity to do so I definitely think it’s worthwhile trying it at least,” she said.

Redback isn’t alone, either. Following in the Perpetual Guardian’s fruitful footsteps, digital agency Versa reaped remarkable results after implementing a four-day work week of their own.

Thanks to No Work Wednesdays, these marketing machines have become three times more profitable, seeing a 46 per cent rise in revenue and a 20 per cent improvement in staff retention year on year.

To top it off, Dave said his decision was based on a lot of research.

For instance, a government study on shorter work weeks in Sweden reported that staff were less stressed, happier and better at time management than before.

According to psychologist, Anders Ericsson, pushing people beyond the timeframe of maximum concentration only leads to less productivity.

Essentially, do it right and a four-day work week could bring fewer burnouts and bigger wins over time.

“Although there won’t be any meetings or production work on Wednesdays, Redback clients can expect zero disruption – office phones and emails will still be manned 8am-5pm, Monday to Friday and emergency support is available for urgent tech issues seven days a week,” Dave concluded.