At W+K London, we’re always pushing ourselves to make sure we’re staying true to the founding ambition of the agency; to provide an environment that inspires people to create the best work of their lives.

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This March, we gave some thought to the way we were working; and how some of the norms of the industry, late nights and long hours, coupled with always-on-technology and days filled with meetings might not necessarily always be helping us get to great work.

We introduced the following guidelines.

  1. No emails between 7pm and 8am, at weekends and during holidays
  2. Encourage a 40 hour week: 4.30pm finishes on a Friday to make this possible
  3. Hold internal meetings between 10am and 4pm
  4. Introduce a formal day in lieu policy

The above guidelines weren’t about working less. They were about protecting our ability to work better. To give ourselves more time to think. To give everyone a chance to have an email free evening; whatever they wanted to do with it. To give greater flexibility to night-owls or early-risers to when they needed to be in the office and to recognise that when we do all need to come in on a weekend; it’s OK to take that time back.

Six months in, we have analysis that shows that the initiative is working and it’s making a difference. We’ve undertaken a survey of all of our employees; in which 91% of respondents felt that they had a better work life balance since the new working guidelines have been implemented. 84% of respondents said they had worked less overtime. This led to people feeling they had an opportunity to think more deeply, manage their own time better and work during the times that suited them best. 86% of respondents felt there had been a perception change overall to how we work in the agency.

We’re still pushing ourselves and some of the changes have been easier to adopt than others; it’s fair to say email guidelines have worked the best and meeting times has been the most challenging, but from the data gathered so far, it looks like overall the experiment has worked.

Last week we spoke with Contagious about how we’ve updated our way of working in the past six months. It’s been published on their website, you can read the article here.

We’re continuing to gather results and look at other data sources to continue to evaluate it.