As I sit down to write this post, I feel even more compelled than usual to embody our organization’s values of candor and vulnerability.
With that, I want to share: I’m equally excited and anxious about what I’m announcing within this post.
I’m excited for our team members, who have actively worked towards achieving this goal for the past 15 months. This was a monumental task for a small, tightly-bound team like Agency’s. They’ve done phenomenal work, and are totally deserving of the era I committed to carrying our team into with their help over a year ago.
I feel anxious, though, because I don’t know how it’ll be received by Agency’s clients. If you’re reading this as a client of ours and have any reservations or concerns, I implore you to write me directly and speak candidly so that we can be mindful of how we proceed and continue serving your organization from here.
I’m committed to fulfilling the promise I made to this team. They’ve earned it, and the evidence strongly suggests that done responsibly, this is a progressive, positive step forward — especially in the technological era we’re living in.
At the same time, I want to be equally clear: I’m not willing to let this change erode the outcomes we deliver for clients. The entire purpose is to protect the kind of focused, high-quality work that our clients hire us for — and we’ll keep iterating our operating system until the experience on your side feels just as strong (or stronger) than before.
Effective January 9, 2026, all tenured full-time team members at Agency will have Friday through Sunday off every week. For teammates who have been with us full-time for at least one year, we’re reducing their standard week from 40 hours to 32 hours while keeping compensation whole — which effectively means a +20% pay adjustment to offset the reduction in hours (absorbed by Agency; this comes at no added cost to our clients).
We’ve tirelessly boosted efficiency through systems, technological leverage, team diversification, and SOPs and achieved our goal of a 4-day workweek.
Here’s why we’re doing it, and how we’re ensuring it comes at no financial or performance cost to our current and future clients:
Why Agency Is Moving to a 4-Day Workweek
We’re not doing this because it’s trendy. We’re doing it because, after building this company alongside a small team of seriously talented humans, I’ve become convinced that “more hours” is a lazy proxy for “better outcomes” in knowledge work — especially in modern marketing.
The best evidence we have (so far) supports that instinct. In a large peer-reviewed evaluation of an income-preserving four-day workweek, researchers analyzed before/after data from 2,896 employees across 141 organizations (including the United States) and compared outcomes against 12 control companies.
Researchers found meaningful improvements in well-being outcomes like burnout and job satisfaction — a pattern the control group did not share (Fan et al., Nature Human Behaviour (2025)).
A separate, large-scale field pilot in the UK (June–December 2022) gives us some of the most concrete “business + human” numbers to reference. Among ~2,900 workers across 61 companies, the report found:
- 71% of employees reported reduced burnout and 39% reported being less stressed
- Company revenue was up 1.4% on average (weighted by company size) during the trial period
- The number of staff leaving participating companies dropped by 57%
- 92% of participating companies continued the policy after the trial
Those findings are documented in Autonomy’s full UK pilot report (Feb 2023), with a research team that included University of Cambridge and Boston College collaborators.
And while it’s not a perfect apples-to-apples comparison to a strict 32-hour week, I also take seriously the results from Iceland’s large public-sector trials of reduced working hours (2015–2019). They involved 2,500+ workers, found productivity/service levels were maintained or improved in many workplaces, and ultimately helped catalyze broad adoption of reduced hours nationally (“Going Public: Iceland’s Journey to a Shorter Working Week” (Autonomy & Alda, 2021)).
Here’s the simplest way I can say it: I want Agency to be a place where great people can do the best work of their careers without burning their lives to the ground to do it. I believe that, if we protect deep work, reduce unnecessary coordination costs, and stay ruthless about prioritization, we can be more effective in four days than the vast majority of teams within our industry are in five.
That’s also why we’re doing this the hard way: this is not a 40-hour week compressed into four longer days. This is a true reduction in weekly working hours — with no reduction in pay for tenured full-time teammates.
What You Can Expect from Agency on Fridays Going Forward
Starting January 9, 2026, Friday becomes “off” for tenured, full-time Agency teammates — which means our default operating cadence is now Monday through Thursday.
Practically speaking: We will still be available for highly urgent needs on Fridays. We’ll maintain limited Friday triage coverage through a combination of (1) full-time teammates who haven’t yet transitioned into the four-day schedule and (2) me directly. If an issue is truly time-sensitive and can’t be resolved through that path, we can pull in a tenured specialist as-needed.
But Fridays will no longer be a standard production day for our team. In other words, we will coordinate with all clients to move away from Friday being a reliable day for reviews, meetings, deliverables, new builds, or iterative back-and-forth.
To make this operationally smooth, here are the commitments we’re holding ourselves to:
- Launch planning: If you have a go-live, campaign launch, or high-stakes deadline that touches a Friday, we’ll plan it proactively earlier in the week so you’re not exposed to unnecessary risk.
- Clear escalation: If something is genuinely urgent on a Friday, you’ll have a direct line to triage it quickly (Slack/email + call/text me).
- No surprises: If we believe a request is likely to create Friday urgency, we’ll flag that earlier so we can adjust timelines, approvals, or resourcing before it becomes a fire drill.
To make this predictable, here’s how we’re defining “highly urgent”:
- Critical revenue-impacting issues (e.g., paid campaigns accidentally paused, tracking catastrophes, leads suddenly not routing, severe CRM automation failure)
- Major website outages or security concerns
- True launch-day issues when Friday is the immovable go-live date
- Anything time-sensitive where waiting until Monday would create a material business risk
For those scenarios, you can still reach us through the same channels (Slack/email) or call/text me directly. As described above, we’ll have limited Friday coverage in place to triage and handle urgent items — and if something can wait until Monday without meaningful downside, we’ll queue it and tackle it first thing the next week.
What will not change: Our expectations for performance, responsiveness (during Mon–Thu), quality, and outcomes. If anything, this shift is designed to protect the kind of focused, high-leverage work that clients actually hire us for — strategy, creative problem-solving, clean execution, and thoughtful iteration — rather than creating the illusion of progress through constant motion.
If you’re the type of client who worries (reasonably, I’ll add) that “less time” might mean “less output,” I’d encourage you to look at the patterns emerging from large-scale trials linked throughout this post where companies reduced hours without reducing pay and still maintained outcomes — including strong improvements in retention and well-being (UK four-day week pilot results) and peer-reviewed evidence showing well-being gains that were not present in control companies (Fan et al., Nature Human Behaviour (2025)).
What We Need from Our Team and Clients to Get This “Right”
A four-day week only works if we’re honest about what actually drives outcomes — and if we’re disciplined enough to protect it.
Here’s what we need from our team (and what I’m holding myself accountable for as the founder):
- Ruthless prioritization. We will keep focusing on the 20% of work that drives 80% of results — and we will say “no” more often to noise.
- Fewer, better meetings. Meetings exist to solve a specific problem and end. Not to signal busyness.
- More asynchronous clarity. Strong briefs, clear acceptance criteria, and documented decisions beat endless real-time back-and-forth.
- Systematic iteration. We’ll keep tightening SOPs, QA checklists, handoffs, and automation so execution gets smoother, not heavier.
Here’s what we need from clients (and I mean this respectfully — because this is a partnership):
- Radical candor. Don’t wait for it to become a major problem before bringing it up. Loop us in ASAP so that we can collaborate with you on staying out in front of your concerns.
- Earlier inputs and approvals when possible. If something is important, getting it to us by Wednesday or, at the absolute latest, Thursday before 10:00a Central U.S. time increases the likelihood it ships cleanly that same week.
- Consolidated feedback. One thoughtful round of feedback beats five micro-rounds that fragment attention and timeline.
- Clear escalation when it’s truly urgent. If it’s a Friday emergency, tell us plainly that it’s a Friday emergency — and why — so we can get to work fixing it immediately.
- Grace for the adjustment period. We will continuously refine the system, but any meaningful operating change this major has a learning curve. Please hang in there with us.
I’m also committing to something explicitly: we will not “set this and forget this.”
We’ll measure what matters, listen diligently, track and observe data as our “north star” as we always do, and evolve our operating system based on reality — including YOUR reality.
In the UK trial I referenced earlier, one of the most striking results wasn’t just well-being improvement — it was the fact that companies continued the policy at very high rates after pressure-testing it (92% continued post-trial). That only happens if performance holds up under scrutiny.
That’s the bar we’re holding ourselves to.
And if you ever feel like we’re missing it, I want you to tell me — directly. Reach out via email if you don’t have my mobile number. We want you to have a direct line with me whenever necessary.
Thank you for reading this announcement, and for as long as we continue working together, collaborating with us to help us become the best organization we can be, and in doing so, serve you unlike any other marketing agency on the planet.
With warmth and sincere gratitude,
Ian Pribyl, Founder & Lead Consultant, Agency
