TAMPA, Fla. \u2014 The five-day workweek has long been the standard for American workers. But some companies are experimenting with a different approach.<\/p>\n
Tampa Bay-based Brick Media first began a four-day workweek for its employees on a trial basis. Three years later, the company has kept to the schedule while continuing to grow.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, developing content comes as second nature for the creative team at Brick Media. But the way this social media agency structures its work week is anything but traditional.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was trying to think about work-life balance for myself and I just thought maybe, well, what if we didn\u2019t work on Fridays?\u201d said Brick Media CEO and Founder Jake Kurtz.<\/p>\n
Three years ago, Kurtz had the idea of moving his staff to a four-day work week.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen the new year started, I told the team we\u2019re going to do this as a pilot test for 90 days and see how it goes,\u201d he said. \u201cI didn\u2019t want to jump all in because I didn\u2019t know how it was going to work with our clients and even if it would be good for the company.\u201d<\/p>\n
The experiment became permanent<\/p>\n
Brick Media\u2019s employees work four 10-hour days each week.<\/p>\n
The switch, Kurtz says, is paying off. Both for the company and its employees. And, he said, the compressed schedule hasn\u2019t slowed the company\u2019s growth.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve had like 25% growth, 30% growth, 20% growth just consistently year over year,\u201d he said, citing company-reported numbers. \u201cSo since 2023, we\u2019ve definitely doubled in revenue, which is incredible. Our employee count has probably also doubled in that time frame, too. So we just continue to grow every year.\u201d<\/p>\n
The idea of working four-days a week attracted employees like Olivia Rhoades, who said that fitting the work into fewer days requires staff to be more deliberate about how they use those hours.<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew I\u2019d have more flexibility, which is what everybody\u2019s looking for. These days, we want more time with family and friends,\u201d she said. \u201cI feel like things actually get accomplished a lot faster here. With my five-day work week, I feel like everything almost got drawn out. We\u2019re very harsh here, in a good way! On not having our meetings go too much over 30 minutes. We\u2019re really good at that. We really manage our time here, and that helps the four-day work week thrive.\u201d<\/p>\n
Executives say the company has also seen an impact on employee retention.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re on for longer periods of time during the day, but when we\u2019re on, we\u2019re completely focused,\u201d said Andrea Echeverry, Director of Client Experience. \u201cIn that sense, it\u2019s benefited our culture, and I think it\u2019s benefited just the way we all work together on a day-to-day basis.\u201d<\/p>\n
And while Kurtz says the schedule has become part of the company\u2019s identity, he said working four days was never the ultimate objective.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe four-day work week itself isn\u2019t the goal,\u201d he said. \u201cThe goal is to build a great company where people stay for a long time. We still do great work, but we still have a life while we do it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA, Fla. \u2014 The five-day workweek has long been the standard for American workers. But some companies are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":404259,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[2031,558,4069,135,137,136,2032,835],"class_list":["post-404258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-app-local-business","tag-business","tag-calvin-lewis","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news","tag-trending-topics","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=404258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404258\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/404259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=404258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=404258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=404258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}