Practice management software company Cliniko operates on a 30-hour week, which company co-founder Joel Friedlaender says is a substantial benefit for employees, but also a considered management decision. “It’s good for us to be able to recruit better people when we can offer a perk like that,” he says. “And in my experience, if you’ve got 30 good hours of work done in a week, that’s a lot. And I mean really quality hours, where you get in the zone and you work well.”
An office-based 40-hour week often entails a lot of waste, he adds, because people get tied up in meetings and don’t get the work done.
“So we just thought, let’s get 30 good hours from everyone in the team and that’ll be enough to run a productive and successful business. And it’s turned out to be true. You know, we’ve done very well with our business always running on that from day one.”
Founded in 2011 by Friedlaender and his wife, osteopath Liora Dafner-Beach, Cliniko is a finalist in the Financial Review BOSS Best Places to Work list, in the Government, Education, Not-for-profit and Health category, along with the Sydney Children’s Hospitals Foundation and the City of Sydney.
Allied health clinics with specialties such as physiotherapy, osteopathy, psychology and occupational therapy can use Cliniko software to manage administration tasks such as scheduling, invoicing, payments and taxes.
With 57 employees working remotely, 20 in Australia and the rest scattered all over the world, daily Cliniko colleague interaction is largely restricted to online chats. So Friedlaender has instituted regular “meet-ups”.
“We try to do it at least once a year where we get at least a big part of the team together for a meet-up,” he says.
“It’s optional attendance, but we did one last year in Thailand and about 40-something of our team came. Around 100 in total attended, because we invite partners and kids as well, and pay for them to attend the meet-ups too.”
Despite operating on a 30-hour week, Cliniko pays “above market rates”, Friedlaender says, and employees’ work schedules are extremely flexible.
“Whatever time they want to work it’s OK,” he adds, “And if they want to work more on some weeks and less on other weeks, that’s OK too.”
About half the staff are software developers and half are customer support. Their widely distributed locations has provided the company with 24-hour coverage, Friedlaender says, but that was a side-benefit.
“Really, we just wanted to hire the best person we could find, and if you don’t limit your search to near your office, then you have a much bigger pool of people to choose from,” he says.
“That was the driving force. But then there’s been other benefits, like diversity and culture benefits that come from having people all over the world.”
Dafner-Beach’s early struggles as an osteopath working with inadequate clinic management software inspired the couple to start Cliniko.
It took Friedlaender seven months of full-time coding to get the software development done, working from early in the morning until late at night, talking to Dafner-Beach non-stop about what was needed. Back then, there was little software suited to professionals in the allied health field.
Now the most-used practice management software in Australia, and used in about 90 countries, Cliniko has proved remarkably successful. “We just keep going,” Friedlaender says. “We keep making the software better; keep looking after our customers that support us.”