VistaPrint cans Friday meetings, finds productivity boost, says CEO Marcus Marchant

E-commerce group Vistaprint says allowing staff an afternoon off work to showcase their hobbies has improved engagement sevenfold.

VistaPrint’s CEO for Australia, New Zealand and Singapore, Marcus Marchant.

Not a lot happens at VistaPrint on a Friday.

After a formal stand-up, a roughly one-hour long meeting, followed by a “power hour” where the team might play Tetris, take a short course from a mental health provider or even get a rundown of another staff member’s side hustle hobby, the day is done.

But its local chief executive, Marcus Marchant, won’t just cull the day all together – despite telling staff their formal day has actually ended around 10.30am.

Mr Marchant said he’s tried it, and the four-day work week just isn’t the right fit, and that staff bonding and flexibility is far better for morale and engagement.

“What we’ve found is that true flexibility is a better unlocker of employee engagement than really rigid practices like a four-day work week,” he told The Weekend Australian.

Post-Covid, everyone at VistaPrint knocked off early on a Friday, but Mr Marchant said the feedback was that it just didn’t work for everyone. Instead, some staff now chose to work and take a half day on other days of the week. Despite this, a few rules remain in place, with zero meetings on a Friday a company-wide rule.

“You could choose to have Friday afternoons off, you could choose to attend your kids’ assembly on a Tuesday morning, or you could work on your side hustle on Thursday afternoon,” he said. “They can do whatever they want. We hope you’re learning but there’s no expectation.”

VistaPrint isn’t the only company that believes it is flexible but doesn’t believe in a four-day working week. Another is Atlassian, one of Australia’s biggest tech success stories and one of the earliest adopters of remote working.

Its head of distributed work, Annie Dean, recently told The Weekend Australian the four-day work could do more harm than good, supporting the view that staff who worked from home wanted to work less.

VistaPrint and Atlassian’s approaches are part of a growing trend in Australian companies. Many are attempting to work out what a truly flexible working environment looks like, as well as battling one of the biggest stoppers of economic growth – dwindling productivity.

The term flexible work carries many meanings across workplaces. Medibank is one of a few trialling a four-day work week, while some banks have called for all staff to return to the office.

For some, it’s the ability to work from home two days a week. For VistaPrint, it’s being able to pick and choose your hours.

VistaPrint and its 170 staff are almost all entirely remote. The company had operated this way since 2020 when its lease expired a few months into Mr Marchant’s at the time new job as CEO amid the pandemic. Globally the company followed, relinquishing all of its offices and even its headquarters in Boston, in the US.

Mr Marchant said he often uses his Friday afternoons to mow his lawn, have lunch with friends or work on his side business, swimwear label Bondi Joe.