Bomper Studio Makes Four-Day Work Week Permanent After Successful Six-Month Trial

Welsh cgi and animation company Bomper Studio is shifting to a four-day workweek after a successful six-month trial.

Who is Bomper? Bomper is an independent production studio that specializes in advertising, branding, broadcast, and music videos. The studio recently released its first short film Coffee Run, produced a music video for Grammy nominee Tyler Childers, and directed two animated music videos for the Foo Fighters.

Bomper’s studio philosophy: The company has always prided itself on a progressive approach to labor, constantly exploring new ways of working, creatively as well as in its structure, processes, and culture. Bomper is entirely self-funded, giving the studio the flexibility to decide its business practices. That independence has allowed Bomper, for the last four years, to devote a quarter of its revenues to research and development.

Experimentation: Because of that philosophy, Bomper was able to start a six-month trial in which the studio remained closed every Friday, without reducing pay and non-compressed hours.

The process: The shift to a four-day workweek wasn’t as simple as just taking Fridays off. According to Bomper, the entire studio worked together to create practices that promoted deep work such as:

• Using screen space effectively
• Removing distractions as much as possible by muting non-essential notifications
• Creating focus music playlists
• Planning better-organized meetings

The results: In total, 15 full-time employees have been impacted by the change. Bomper says that since it implemented the change, it has not received any reported issues or seen any decline in the quality of work at the studio. Additionally, the studio was able to maintain the same volume of work and growth without missing a single deadline during the trial.

Bomper used key performance indicators and staff surveys to track the success of the changes as experienced by their employees and received an overwhelmingly positive response. Staff said they felt a better work-life balance not only increased productivity and creativity but produced a happier workplace environment.

What they’re saying: Bomper HR manager Ceri Davies explained:

Flexible working options and overtime pay can bring many great benefits, but we wanted to make sure we were doing all we could to prevent burnout and provide a healthy balance for our team. A four-day working week allows our team to have an extra day to relax, with more time for hobbies or to spend with loved ones, to recharge, and to ultimately focus on their well-being… We hope this encourages more businesses to work towards this model and shake up what the future of work-life balance looks like.