On November 30, 2021, we announced that DCKAP will be going fully remote (or distributed) and that we will not be opening our offices. With distributed work, our team has the flexibility to work from anywhere in the world. It allows our team to drop their kids at school, take care of parents or any household work, and more. We also believe that with distributed and remote work, people who did not have an opportunity to work in the past because of family and other constraints, now have the flexibility and avenues to pursue their professional careers.
In a recent Psychology Today article, it is mentioned that due to the “patterns of work changing because of the pandemic, the question of how we work – and how much we work – stands out as particularly relevant.” Why do we often push ourselves to the limit, what constitutes work in modern times, and how do we compare to other societies? Perhaps not surprisingly, their study showed that both men and women within various cultures, largely work elongated hours no matter the roles of the job. We seem to be pushed to these limits, perhaps due to the demands of the labor, and perhaps in part from the adherence to social norms.
One of our team members, Mohan Natarajan, suggested that we take one Friday in a month off and have a long weekend every month. This sounded like a great idea. If you think about it, a lot of us are in a wind-down mode on Fridays. In a lot of companies, people used to leave offices early to avoid traffic on Fridays. Also, with work from home and distributed work, one common concern is that people are overworked.
More than the hours being spent at work, it is what is being accomplished that matters. Eight hours of highly productive work is far better than working all day along or scrambling to get things done. We have always encouraged our team not to work more than eight hours a day, and a solid eight hours a day goes a long way.
At DCKAP, we love the culture of experimentation. This year we have decided to experiment with a four-day work week once a month. We recently made an announcement that every second Friday of the month in 2022 will be a day off for all our employees globally. Ever since we announced it, it has been welcomed with warmth by our team. We also think this will help our team to plan their work week better.
We have also published our holiday calendar publicly here. We are excited to see how this experiment of a long weekend every month works out.