Name of Company: Pursuit Marketing

Sector: Marketing

Size of company: 100

Location: Glasgow, Scotland

Introduction: 2016

Problem organisation was facing:

Glasgow, Scotland–based Pursuit Marketing is a call centre that works with major technology companies to sell their products to other large businesses. Founded in 2011 by several veterans industry veterans, they had grown to a staff of fifty by 2016, but the slow economy and uncertainty generated by Brexit and the Scottish referendum were hitting revenues. Further, new IT vendors were moving into Glasgow, and were starting to target Pursuit Marketing's employees. Because they were in B2B sales, they had invested heavily in training for their marketing team, making them an attractive target to new entrants offering higher salaries and bonuses. It was time for "radical changes," director Lorraine Gray recalled. "We had to protect our sales and grow and achieve what we wanted to. And we had to make sure the team remained happy and wouldn’t be tempted to move off.”

Approach taken by 4DWG and/or Company:

When reviewing the company's numbers, the leadership team noticed two things. First, 90 percent of employees reached their weekly sales targets by Thursday afternoon, and those who missed them by Thursday weren’t very likely to get caught up on Friday. Second, they had a number of working mothers who had already moved to three or four-day weeks, and “they actually achieved the same or more than people working a conventional thirty-eight-hour week,” Lorraine says. This convinced Gray and managing director Patrick Byrne that they could move to a 4-day week.

In September 2016, they announced that they were moving to a four-day workweek while maintaining everyone’s salaries at the same level. The leadership calculated that a shorter workweek would “really change the business and transform it,” not just be “a token gesture,” Patrick Byrne says. The planning process was relatively short, in part because call centers have clear targets, metrics, and incentives, and because they had a group of workers who had already figured out how to do a shorter week. The company expanded its training program, and the working mothers, who previously had been somewhat marginal figures, were now recognized as innovators to be followed.

Impact of intervention (any statistics or qual feedback, or changes they made etc.):

In the first year, annual retention skyrocketed to 98 percent, which meant less disruption to the business, and a £250,000 savings on recruitment, job advertisements, and training. Sick days dropped to “practically zero," Lorraine says, "which is unheard-of in the call center world.” The company expanded operations to Europe, and “we’re more efficient, so we deliver more to our clients." Patrick estimates that Pursuit Marketing added $2.1 billion to their clients’ sales pipelines in 2018, and generated sales in thirty-four countries. In 2020, they joined with two other consultancies to form a new data-driven sales and marketing enterprise, the 4icg Group. Those companies have also adopted a four-day workweek, and have seen similar improvements: one saw productivity jump 30 percent while working hours dropped 22 percent.