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# 1000 things we tried for new work. Here are the results.

Can a 36-hour workweek and transparent salaries cure employee burnout? Discover the exact 'new work' experiments one agency used to build a high-retention culture.

- **Speakers:** [Niklas Wiesauer](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/@niklas-wiesauer)
- **Event:** World Congress 2024
- **Published:** August 20, 2024
- **Duration:** 29:33
- **URL:** https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/1073-1000-things-we-tried-for-new-work-here-are-the-results

## Summary

The modern workplace is facing rising stress and burnout, forcing companies to rethink retention, culture, and daily operations. For an Austrian media agency, navigating these challenges meant abandoning entrenched industry norms to experiment with a series of 'new work' initiatives. By focusing on lowering the physical and mental toll of operations, the organization systematically overhauled its work hours, communication habits, and compensation structures to create a high-trust, high-retention environment.\n\nA primary driver of success was reducing the standard workweek to 36 hours while abolishing unpaid overtime expectations. However, maintaining expected creative output limits how low those hours can go, requiring strict operational boundaries to sustain productivity. This included establishing deep-work hours free from instant messaging disruptions and shortening default meeting lengths to 25 minutes. To manage performance without micromanagement, leaders adopted OKRs and emphasized mutual trust from the initial interview stage. Fostering culture in a remote-friendly setup also proved challenging, revealing that the connective, morale-boosting impact of large annual offsites decays within a single month. In response, mixing massive yearly retreats with frequent, small-scale gatherings—like sponsored community lunches—proved essential for sustaining team cohesion, while redesigning the physical workspace into distinct silent, focus, and community zones naturally attracted remote workers back to the office without mandates.\n\nBeyond time management, financial predictability and purpose-driven perks solidified employee satisfaction. A transparent, five-factor salary formula explicitly accounts for inflation, role type, company performance, and tenure, allowing teams to forecast their compensation years in advance while aggressively boosting pay for lower-tier earners. Additionally, gamified employee development plans replaced standard performance tracking, and a flexible benefits model allowed staff to opt out of unused wellness perks in exchange for their cash equivalent. Ultimately, these structural changes only yield long-term engagement when tethered to a clear, actionable company purpose, ensuring that operational flexibility genuinely inspires rather than simply placating a distributed workforce.

**Keywords:** new work initiatives, 36-hour workweek transition, unlimited paid time off, remote-first culture building, trust-based working models, OKR implementation, asynchronous communication rules, meeting duration optimization, transparent salary formulas, gamified employee development, flexible compensation benefits, employee burnout prevention, talent retention strategies, hybrid office zoning, sustainable team cohesion offsites

## Chapters

1. **Defining new work and measuring employee happiness** (00:02) — New work dynamics focus on making employees happy, retaining talent, and continuously measuring satisfaction.
1. **Company background and the impact of workplace stress** (02:25) — High levels of stress and burnout in the media industry drive the need to improve working conditions and overall well-being.
1. **Transitioning to a reduced 36-hour work week** (05:32) — Reducing standard weekly hours and eliminating all-in contracts helps compensate employees fairly without sacrificing productivity.
1. **Protecting employee focus with communication rules and OKRs** (07:37) — Limiting instant messaging, reducing default meeting times, and introducing OKRs help teams maintain productivity within shorter weeks.
1. **Balancing unlimited vacation and remote work culture** (09:29) — Unlimited vacation and remote work policies rely heavily on establishing mutual trust during the hiring process.
1. **Fostering connection through regular team offsite gatherings** (11:45) — Combining large annual offsites with small monthly gatherings builds lasting connections in a remote-first team.
1. **Redesigning office spaces for diverse work needs** (14:22) — Creating specific work zones and giving employees dedicated budgets for improvements encourages voluntary in-person attendance.
1. **Creating a transparent and predictable salary model** (17:26) — A customized formula factoring base inflation, role, company success, and loyalty provides financial transparency and security.
1. **Gamifying employee growth with functional development plans** (21:23) — Structured development plans that track skill acquisition and recommend training help employees visualize their long-term career progression.
1. **Aligning company benefits with core organizational purpose** (22:16) — Connecting new work initiatives and client events to a core purpose ensures long-term employee engagement.
1. **Focusing on implementation rigor over new initiatives** (24:26) — Prioritizing the successful execution of existing models before adding new benefits maintains a high standard of workplace quality.
1. **Balancing psychological safety with strict performance expectations** (26:03) — Maintaining trust in a remote culture requires separating from employees who consistently violate agreements and negatively impact teams.
1. **Measuring productivity and team output with OKRs** (27:58) — Balancing daily business tasks with structured goals remains a key challenge when assessing productivity in shortened work weeks.

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