The agency owner went viral on LinkedIn with a post announcing the start of the four-day work week. Could they pave the way for other companies?
4-day work week collects 12,000 reactions in 3 days
The CEO of a digital PR agency has gone viral on LinkedIn after his post announcing the company was moving to a four-day work week garnered more than 120,000 reactions in three days.
Fery Kaszoni, the founder of Search Intelligence, a leading digital PR agency based in Witney, Oxfordshire, shared a post on the professional networking platform that may have given the first glimpse of a crackdown on corporate perks.
No more pizza Fridays
The post began: “Enough is enough! No more Pizza Fridays in our company. We are also discontinuing the Beer Friday initiative. No more beer or alcohol on Fridays. And no more casual wear for our employees on Fridays either.”
Instead of stripping employees of benefits, however, the update revealed that the company would actually introduce a big new one – every free Friday. Kaszoni’s viral post continued:
“Yes, we are deleting all the good things that our team at Search Intelligence Ltd benefited from on Friday, as we are introducing a 4 day work week from this month (May) and having Fridays permanently off.
“As of today, every week is a holiday week in our company, almost 40 team members have a long weekend every week! We are also maintaining the same wages and not requiring people to work longer hours on the four remaining working days of the week.”
The update sparked an immediate reaction and has since received more than 120,000 reactions, 668 shares and more than 1,200 comments, resulting in a total of nine million views so far.
+400 applications
In addition, Search Intelligence received more than 400 applications and inquiries from people around the world who wanted to work for the company, while the company’s LinkedIn profile had more than twice as many followers.
A heated debate erupted in the comments as people speculated on whether pizza will be allowed on other days, asked if they could work for the company and shared their hope that their employers would adopt the same policy.
Commenting on the post’s popularity, Fery Kaszoni said: “I enjoy using LinkedIn to share my knowledge and insights on building Search Intelligence from three people over the last year to a team of almost 40 now. This post really resonated with people on the platform and it’s clear that the four-day workweek is a very hot topic. We look forward to rolling it out to our company and offering everyone an even better work-life balance, allowing them to be most productive Monday through Thursday.”
Positive reactions to the post included: “Cue Search Intelligence Ltd’s inbox is crashing with resumes 😂 great to see another company introducing a modern, forward-thinking, people-centric advantage that brings real value to their teams.”
“If I ever become an employee again, this would be the kind of company I would love to work for!”
“I find it amazing that you have organized your team to be able to work a 4 day week, deliver for clients and give your team the time they need and undoubtedly deserve to to live his life!”
Source: techround