FOUR-X Day Work week

Bottom Line Up Front

Now that babies and barking dogs have become mainstays in the background of our daily Zoom calls, we seem to have traded the challenges of commuting to work for the challenges of staying home. Remember when we thought working from home was the answer to all of our problems? Well as the saying goes, be careful what you wish for.

At SEVN-X we genuinely believe that it is tremendously difficult to differentiate work from home, when you work from home. It seems to us that the blurred lines between our jobs and our personal lives have accelerated burnout without accelerating productivity. That’s why, in 2021 amidst the pandemic, we fought to keep that balance for our team by acquiring additional office space—a counter intuitive move to those that are downsizing or dispatching with physical office space altogether but, we made that choice to help our team have a place to go that didn’t feel like just another day of video conferences and laundry swapping. Now, in 2022, we’re pioneering another initiative. Starting in February, SEVN-X will be implementing a 4-day workweek for its staff.

The Details

We’re excited to be joining the new and growing 4-day workweek movement. Large companies and small start-ups alike, across the US and abroad, have adopted this new schedule, following proven and stunningly successful results from case-studies and trials around the globe.

Microsoft’s operations in Japan tested the model and reportedly saw, along with generally more happy workers, a 40% increase in productivity across the board.

To be clear, a 4-day workweek is first and foremost about well-being, mental health, and placing our families first. In a close second, it has been shown time and time again that improving morale improves productivity. So while this is about providing our team with an extra day each week to devote to their personal lives, our expectation is that with an extra day for family and life events, the remaining work days will yield the same (or more) productivity. Why take five days, when four will do?

We believe that ‘work’ tends to fill the space allocated to it. Thus, our expectation is that we’re going to become vastly more efficient. While we’ll have less hours in the week, we’ll execute with more intention.

Is this a way to improve the health and wellness of our team? We think so.

Is this a way to improve our performance and outputs for our customers? We think so.

Is this a way to improve the workweek? We think so.

But SEVN-X is 24 hours right?

Our company exists because of our customers, not the other way around. We understand that bad guys aren't adopting the 4-day workweek anytime soon and that cybersecurity is a 24/7/365 endeavor. Our team will continue to be there for our customers–especially on their worst day. In fact, on New Year’s Eve you could find senior leadership at SEVN-X onsite with a client helping them through an incident. We even had breakfast with them on New Year’s Day.

We're simply encouraging our team to plan and organize their weeks so that they have an extra day for themselves and their families. Do emergencies happen? Of course. Will our new workweek work perfectly every week? Certainly not. But, we'll continue to to work closely with our team to ensure everyone is benefitting from these changes: including our customers.

Summary

At SEVN-X the relationships and partnerships with our clients have always been, and will continue to be, paramount to our success. We strongly believe that we need a happy, healthy, and motivated team to best serve our internal and external customers. We believe this new workweek structure is a way of putting our principles and words into action and we’re excited to “walk the walk”!

Here’s to a happy, healthy, and productive 2022!