Employee manual

Schedule, Time tracking & Calendar

Only 4 days a week

We have implemented 4 day work week! Meaning, we work 30 hours from Monday to Thursday. In order to make the 4dww successful, we align our schedules.

• Meet at work earliest at 7:30 and latest at 9:00.
• Your day finishes after 7,5 hours of work excluding a 30 min lunch break from 11.30 -12.00.

We only work 4 days a week by default, and have Fridays off. There are 2 exceptions we’d like you to be aware of, as first, we have 5 internal days per year which will be held on Fridays. Those are mandatory for all employees, but don’t worry.. they are FUN! Second, when a public holiday takes place on a weekday from Monday to Thursday, we will use Friday as a compensation day to keep 4 working days per week.

One extra day of weekend gives more value then you might think. It really gives you this extra time to fully reload and start the news week fresh and energised. This extra free time comes along with more focus on effeciency during your working days. Plan your time at the hairdresser, dentist or other non-urgent appointments on Fridays and dedicate your time at work effectively from Monday to Thursday.

Use your calendar

Google Calender

We use Google Calendar as a common calendar platform. Make sure that your calendar is up-to-date and as comprehensive as possible, so it’s easy for your colleagues to see when you are available. Write in your calendar if you are not in the office / have an appointment that affects your availability. It makes it so much easier to coordinate meetings.

As part of the 4dww, we shorten our meetings and make sure to keep them effective. We book each other for short 20 minutes meetings or long 50 minutes meetings. When booking a meeting, add an agenda with topics and action points. Also remember to answer all calendar invitations so the organizer does not have to follow up on your attendance.

• Have a look at ‘Good meeting practices’ to be fully prepared and to be a ‘pro’ meeting practitioner.

We’d like you to implement:

• Add Abtion’s calender to your own google calender to stay on point with public holidays, free days, internal days and birthdays
• Turn on ‘effective meetings’ in your calendar settings and set 20 min as default for scheduling meetings

Awareness of our precious time

To be sure we use our time sufficiently, get paid for the work we deliver, continuously getting better at estimating project and to make sure we don’t work too less/much, we track all of our working hours. Time tracking has nothing to do with surveillance or performance monitoring. It is simply a matter of getting our principles right in regard to our 4 dww, our invoices and proposals.

Therefore an introduction to our way of tracking time right down here:

Time tracking in Harvest

We track 30 hours per week, equivalent to 7,5 hours per day (excluding lunch breaks) and aim to have an avarage billable rate >90%. Flexing is not really our ‘thing’ and we expect you to track 30h by the end of the week. To make sure working hours don’t go to waste, we submit our timesheet Thursday afternoon before you leave the office. (.. Yes, it is amazing! Your weekend starts on Thursday afternoon)

Time tracking happens right from the moment you start working and finished when you finish your day. Sounds perhaps a little strict, but it works. It creates more awareness of the time you use at work. This would give you a good indication of a satisfying and sufficient day, or a less satisfying day being unsure where you used your time on. And as important, it ensures that all our billable working hours are registered. Because this is the only way, we get money in the bank.