Agency gives staff 10 hours weekly creative time
A digital agency is to give its staff a 10 hours a week break from client work to focus on creative projects of their own choosing.
The Brisbane-based Cru Duigital said the concept was based on Google’s famous “20% time” which gives staff time to develop their own ideas.
Cru GM Rob Ryan said: “To help manage that creative culture, staff get 10 hours a week to carry out research, develop ideas, finish off things that they think they need to get up to standard and support each other. We ask our designers to get out to galleries, shows and exhibitions and to talk between themselves about what they see.”
The time has been spent by staff on activites such as visiting galleries and exploring new web formats such as HTML5.
Cru clients include the Queensland Department of Justice, Suzuki Queensland, Fortitude Valley venue Cloudland and Parmalat brand Breaka.
wonder if they will still get their 10 hours when they are very busy post GFC?
that is too funny, obviously not busy enough 😉 or over staffed … which one is it?
Wow – that is truly ground breaking news! What piffle – agencies have been doing this for years.
Be under no illussion – those costs will be re-cuperated via clients. Nothings for free.
what do the account service ppl get to do in their 20% time – smash the beers?
Yeah that’ll last
Sad that we are so cynical…
I think most in the industry are all a little over the agency fluff…
Hear too much about this stuff and other ‘agencies’ – we know who they are – talking about new offices here and there etc and nothing eventuating and to be honest this is not even new news…
They should make the projects public (blog) to keep them honest and foster that culture publicly, – massive fan of this thinking.
I think if handled well, it is a great approach.
As long as my calendar permits, I’ve been trying to leave my Fridays as ‘creative zen’ days for last 15 years and came up with many commercially successful projects during these ‘easy’ days. Even reading a random art article can inspire you to come up with a technology lifestyle solution. It’s been tested 🙂
I say ‘good on them’!
The cynical reaction by most in the comments of this tells me 1 thing … Most people simply don’t understand how innovation and creativity happens. Also shows how CHANGE is scary for ‘most’ people.
Your missing the point I think. Firstly this is NOT new news and so ‘appears’ like some agency short of substantial stuff regurgitating something so they can get on Mumbrella. Sad.
The idea of creative time is great, but i’d be really interested to know how they fit it into an agency / professional services business model. It works for Google because their revenue comes from a “product” that makes money for them 24 hours a day. Most digital agencies sell head-hours to develop customised solutions for clients. The ongoing struggle is to ensure staff are utilised on billable work for a high percentage of their time, and that all the time worked on projects is actually billed.
Creating a model where over 20% of your billable time suddenly becomes ringfenced for creativity development means you need to either be extremely efficient and have fantastic utilization rates, or have very high hourly rates, or be billing all projects on a time-and-materials basis.
So i’d love to know how they do it and still remain a viable business.
Oh don’t worry. They’ll still be working 50+ hours a week, probably longer because they’re in digital.
But at least they get a chance to explore a true creative outlet which makes them happier to do whatever the client asks them to do instead of trying to find a creative outlet in advertising.
And they’re not expected to focus on ‘spec’ work, which is why good agencies deliberately run the creative department at 6-7 hours a day 70% of the time, keeping the reserve for pitches (or sacking those who don’t do award winning proactive).
Plus I dare say anything they come up with during this time will be owned by the agency – read any creatives contract and you’ll see why.
@ MightyRed – YOU’RE (not your). Hmm sounds like you could do with a writer or proof reader or perhaps you’re in need of 10 hours of creative time to re-read your comments. If it works for them who cares? Could do with that in our office. Either that or a couldn’t be fucked Friday.
I would be so interested to hear what their Clients think about this and whether they might assume that the work production might be lowered by 20%.
Logic – suit bashing… Isn’t that a little passé?
Plenty of good suits add alot to the creative process.
Overall, an amusing article. Pardon me while I scoff.
I’m thinking it’s more of a IF you have time between projects, then you have UP to 10hrs a week to get out & be creative- as opposed to sitting around watching the clock.. which I don’t think wouldn’t be very often!
Either way, I think it’s great way to value your employees, which is what keeps them hardworking & loyal.