Kickstarter
By: Barbara Abadi
Introduction
Since launching it in 2021, the most profound impact of our 4-day week has been on employee retention. Relatedly, employee engagement is up by 50%. While we were lucky to meet 70% of our OKRs in any given quarter prior to our pilot, we now hit more than 90%.
Kickstarter is the leading crowdfunding platform for funding creative projects. Each year, they help fund about 20,000 creative projects across art, film, design, games, and publishing and drive about $700M in funding through our online platform. Chief Strategy Officer, Jon Leland, tells us how their 4-day week experience has been since launching it in 2021.
Kickstarter’s 4-Day Work Week Journey
In 2021, we joined the 4 Day Week Global pilot of a 4-day week, as we believed we could boost productivity, give employees time to pursue their own creative pursuits and promote a healthier work-life balance with a thoughtful transition to a shorter workweek.
As a Public Benefit Organization, and the first tech company with a wall-to-wall union, we’ve been at the forefront of corporate innovation in the tech industry for the benefit of society and that is why we were named one of TIME’s 100 most influential companies along with 4 Day Week Global.
What Works Well
Communication was the cornerstone of our implementation of a 4-day week. People have a strong emotional reaction to a shorter workweek, and we wanted to make sure that everyone was signed on for the fact that we may have to go back or adjust as we learn.
The excitement was palpable across the organization, but we also recognized some apprehension, particularly among team leaders concerned about maintaining productivity levels.
Addressing these concerns was crucial. We worked closely with teams, ensuring they felt confident about the adjustments they were going to make to reduce meetings or types of work and ensuring they had clarity on their priorities. Good leadership practices of clear goals and mandates, high expectations, and high trust to execute were the most important aspects of our implementation of the 4-day week. We gave teams guidance on improving
their processes and gave them a greenlight to adjust them and cut out inefficient meetings or low-impact work.
While we were lucky to meet 70% of our objectives and key results in any given quarter prior to our pilot, we now hit more than 90%. It’s easy to think that a company might have to sacrifice some ambition to implement a 4-day week, but we have only increased the scale of our ambition since its adoption.
The most profound impact is on the lives of employees and the people we love. It has been particularly powerful for the young parents at Kickstarter, who get priceless time to spend with their children in their early years.
Challenges
The transition to a 4-day week was not without its challenges. Some teams took longer to fully adapt to the new schedule. This was particularly true for teams that were already understaffed and needed to hire additional personnel or those that needed to figure out how to increase efficiencies over time. We supported these teams through the transition, providing additional resources and guidance as needed.
So far, we have made only one significant change following the pilot when we realized that weeks with holidays, which were 3-day workweeks during the pilot with Monday and Friday off, were simply not working. To solve the problem, we shifted to working Fridays when Monday was a holiday, so we are always working a 4-day week. That policy has allowed us to maintain productivity while creating an interesting schedule where holidays create a 4-day weekend (Friday-Monday) followed by a traditional two-day weekend.
Advice to Potential 4-Day Work Week Adopters
A lot of people don’t understand what a 4-day week is. They assume it’s a hard and fast rule where everything shuts down after 4 days and 32 hours of work. But really, it’s about changing our norms around work.
With good leadership, improved practices, and the better balance and engagement that a 4-day week provides, we can usually get everything done in 32 hours/4 days.
As an executive, adopting a 4-day week requires courage. It’s much safer to stick with the status quo. But sticking with the status quo isn’t leadership.
There is now a ton of evidence that a 4-day week works for people and for organizations. It’s time we all start shifting towards a new norm for work.