Baltimore software company Tricerat is switching to a 4-day work week. This is how it got there

When the pandemic arrived, the Baltimore print management software company Tricerate did not miss a thing. The 23-year-old has had a “work from anywhere” policy for a decade, so all the infrastructure was in place to go remotely, and employees were used to the flexibility. And along the way, CEO John Byrne said the company has built a strong culture.

A big change, however, is coming this year. In the fourth quarter, the company will begin a four-day work week. Byrne said it was a “big change,” but it’s designed to provide a better work-life balance for the team of just under 50 people. It is also the one who wins the favors of the employees. When company executives announced the move with all hands inside its newly opened head office at the Hangar Building near Union collective, they got a standing ovation. Not the typical reaction in a team meeting.

“It was a good day,” Byrne said.

With a pandemic that puts work-life balance in literally the same space and increased burnout, the conversation about a four-day work week is getting louder and louder. A four-year trial in Iceland that set 32-hour work weeks showed that productivity stayed the same or improved, and workers in turn were less stressed. In the United States, there is legislation in Congress that seeks to make this a standard and goes through early adopters like Kickstarter.

Byrne believes more companies will get there soon, and he wants to be at the forefront. Certainly this is a “radical change”, as he put it. Yet the way Tricerat has come to this point is a result of approaches already taken by many modern companies, both in the push towards a human operations approach to leading teams that values ​​employee feedback, and the software businesses use to make operations more efficient and track activity.

Tricerat has tools for human resources, customer relationship management and business resource planning to keep running. He closely monitors his clients’ satisfaction as a measure of his success. This means that the key metric is the promoter’s net score.

At the same time, the company often quizzes team members and seeks improvements. Flexibility has always been at the top of the list of those answers, and working from anywhere has made that happen. But as part of this policy, the company has found that over time employees become more productive. They had fewer distractions and meetings were reduced to just focusing on collaboration. He’s not the first CEO to talk about how distributed work helps get things done.

This year, they decided to explore areas for further productivity gains and found that work-life balance could be the key. It’s not just about separating the two areas, but providing more space for errands, babysitting, and hobbies which tend to become a long week for everyone.

“This led us to the idea that if employees had more time to complete personal tasks, they would be even more focused during work time,” Byrne said.

So, on October 1, the change happens. As part of Tricerat’s approach, employees will work with managers to set up their four-day schedule for one week. The business will still be open five days a week, but not everyone will be working every day. There will be learning as it goes, but Byrne said the systems the company has put in place for human resources and day-to-day management will allow it to continue to measure customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction as it unfolds. to measure. It was key to Byrne’s confidence that productivity will only increase, even as hours worked decrease.

“You really have to look at how you manage yourself and what metrics you use to determine productivity,” he said. “If you don’t know what it is today, it’s pretty hard to predict what it will be like after you make that change. “

Culture is just as important. If the team is not already dedicated, committed to the mission, and even happy in their work, it will be harder to believe that everything can be done. The foundation of Tricerat has been laid over the years. Others could integrate it from the start. The point is, teams have to be ready.

“There are no stage jumps,” Byrne said.

-30-