- Jason Fried is the founder and CEO of Basecamp, which provides workflow management tools for businesses and freelancers.
- Basecamp, which pulls in tens of millions in profits annually, already operates with employees working remotely, a strategy many companies are now implementing to protect workers during the novel coronavirus outbreak.
- Fried took his employee care to the next level: He told his workers to take a four-day weekend to prepare themselves and their loved ones for life during the pandemic.
- "We need time to think, consider, and take care of personal business," he wrote, sharing the letter on Twitter to encourage other companies to do the same.
- Click here for more BI Prime stories.
Jason Fried, CEO of work-management tool developer Basecamp, knew the coronavirus pandemic would change the way his employees operated. To date, there have been almost 138,000 cases of COVID-19 across 117 countries and more than 5,000 deaths worldwide, according to Johns Hopkins' Center for Systems Science and Engineering live tracker. And that number is growing quickly.
"Internally, I could sense some kinds of stress and anxiety; we run our internal communication on Basecamp, and you could see messages like, 'Schools are closing and I need to figure out childcare but I can't do it because I'm at work,'" Fried told Business Insider. "So we knew we needed to give people some space here."
The United States, currently fielding more than 1,800 confirmed cases, just declared a state of emergency over the pandemic, and closed borders from many countries across Europe and Asia for the next 30 days. More than half of US states have declared states of emergency to fight the coronavirus outbreak.
So workers and companies have had to adapt, from implementing emergency contingency plans to enforcing remote-work strategies.
Fried took it a step further. Basecamp, which provides workflow management tools for businesses and freelancers all over the world, has 50 employees spread across 32 cities and garners tens of millions in annual profits. The 21-year-old company's mission stresses that all of their employees are free to work and live wherever.
Ahead of increased quarantines and stress proliferated by the virus' unpredictability, Fried told his workers to take time off to prepare, sharing the letter on Twitter to encourage other companies to offer similar long weekends.
Here’s the internal announcement we posted to Basecamp letting all employees know about the extra paid days off to prepare. If you’re a biz owner, and you want to do the same, feel free to copy whatever you’d like from this announcement for your own employees. pic.twitter.com/KRNRJXXy6q
— Jason Fried (@jasonfried) March 13, 2020
"We knew that the weekends were going to be mobbed, because during the week people are at work, so we wanted to give them Friday and Monday to get settled," he said. "And obviously lots of kids are going to be out of school on Monday, so it was the right thing to do for people."
The internal response was thankful, he shared. Fried hopes that people can take the time they need, depending on their personal and family circumstances. He also hopes that companies take similar steps to help their employees, encouraging managers to copy and paste his own letter if they don't know what to write.
"Not every company can do this for a variety of reasons, but a lot of them can, and if they can, they should," he added.
The letter that Fried sent to his employees
There's a lot going on here at Basecamp.
We're in the home stretch for HEY, we have Basecamp customers to support, we're giving away books and comping accounts for first responders and health care workers.
On top of that, the world feels like it's coming apart. Countries are shutting borders, travel is grinding to a halt, schools and universities are closing up, and the news is not good. The risks are real. And for once, the reality is likely worse than the news. Can you imagine? Everyone's nervous, anxious, and, soon, exhausted.
We all need to breathe a bit. And we all need some time to make adjustments in our lives. Either stocking the fridge, helping the elderly in our families cope with the new normal, or figuring out what to do with the kids when they're home for weeks without school or daycare. We need time to think, consider, and take care of personal business. And it's hard to do that while you're holding down a full-time job.
So let's take a couple days off of work. No work this Friday, no work next Monday. That'll give most of us a four-day weekend to get things in order. Obviously we'll need to continue to support our customers and our infrastructure, so Support and Ops will need to watch those front lines, but we can relax all non-essential work there, and trade off different days off. Everyone should get at least two days off within the next seven days.
We're still aiming to release HEY.com in April, but that's our self-imposed deadline. We can always move it if we have to. But for now I'd like to keep one eye on that prize, but we'll keep our other eyes on the reality on the ground.
We're wishing everyone well during these trying times. If you can stay out of the public square, stores, and what not, we'd advise you to do that. Be safe, be smart, and be good to one another and those in need.
Much love.
Jason + David
Join the conversation about this story »
NOW WATCH: How groundhogs became the animal that predicted the weather
Visit dearJulius.com to get free premium content for all of your lifestyle needs.
COMMENTS