A Democratic fundraising shop founded with the goal of addressing toxic workplace culture in the campaign industry is moving to a four-day work week.
Authentic announced the move last week together with the Campaign Workers Guild, which represents staffers at the digital fundraiser. Compensation won’t change as a result of the new schedule. The company’s management proactively proposed the shift prior to its latest collective bargaining with unionized employees, and then negotiated on the details with the union. It’s a process that started last summer.
“What we did do [last] summer was we’d tested a summer Friday [half-day schedule], and that was at the request of the union,” Loren Merchan, a partner and president, COO at Authentic, told C&E.
“We tested it out and it largely went pretty well. And so we had some discussions as a leadership team about if we thought we could do something bigger, something longer term, what that would take.”
Merchan said that the schedule is still flexible enough to allow for some staff to work during breaking-news events, such as the vote to expel now-ex-Congressman George Santos (R-N.Y.) on Friday Dec. 1, or to help clients handle primary votes next year.
“There’s always understanding that if rapid response things happen, whether that’s on Friday or Saturday or Sunday, that we will respond,” Merchan said.
Clients have been generally responsive to the idea, which is taking hold in other industries as well.
“What we’ve told clients is that if it’s not urgent, then it will wait until Monday, and we want to work with them to make sure they’re getting their drafts far enough in advance to approve it so that way we can get that all set up for the weekend in advance. We’re trying to do more advanced planning with them,” she said. “And then kind of identifying what things are urgent and need that urgent response on a Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and what things can wait until Monday.”
That said, Merchan noted that managing workflow will be an evolving process. Moreover, as the schedule gets more hectic closer to Election Day 2024, the staff’s schedule will get back to five days.
“That time between Labor Day and after the election, we will switch back to a five-day work week during that period,” she said. “But otherwise we’ll likely be maintaining the four-day work week.”
For now, it’s a pilot program that the company will reevaluate in the spring. But Merchan believes the program will become permanent, and it’ll help Authentic with staff retention, which is an ongoing issue for many industry employers.
“We definitely think it will help with talent retention and, hopefully, recruitment,” she added. “This is a high turnover industry. [Diversity, equity and inclusion] is really important to us and that’s something that we struggle with in this industry, and sometimes we need to try to draw candidates in from outside of our industry.
“So we are looking at ways to help with our recruitment as well as our retention here because we spend a lot of time investing in our employees and training them and managing them.”
Taylor Billings, organizing director with CWG, said the Guild hopes this starts an industry-wide trend.
“We hope not only that Authentic workers feel the benefits of a 4-day workweek, but also that other firms and organizations across the industry will follow their lead,” said Billings.
