Supercharging MetroTeam productivity with ‘Focus Fridays’

Focus Friday is our team’s day to take a deep breath and concentrate – free from internal distractions to focus further on you – our invaluable customers!

We all get frustrated when we cannot clear the big jobs because little tasks, interruptions, calls and meetings suck up all our time, and pretty soon, we find ourselves surrounded by unfinished jobs with no obvious solution.

Metro’s ‘Focus Friday’ initiative is when we work together to create the buffer needed to focus on creating real value for our customers.

The purpose of ‘Focus Friday’ is to provide time to work without distractions, and those come mainly in the form of meetings.

With few exceptions, our team will no longer book internal meetings on Fridays, but customer calls or meetings are still to be led by customer availability, regardless of which day.

Companies from Citigroup to Facebook have embraced the ‘Focus Day’ concept, setting aside one day per week to focus on personal work priorities without being interrupted by meetings to increase productivity and reduce stress.

An uninterrupted ‘Focus Friday’ diminishes subject or task switching, which means no winding down one task to prepare for a meeting and no wrapping up loose ends post-meeting before trying to get the focus back on the original task.

Research shows that when you switch tasks, a part of your brain is still thinking about the previous task. It takes some time for those thoughts to quiet down so you can concentrate fully on the task at hand. In the meantime, your performance suffers. Researchers call this phenomenon “attention residue.” And studies show it takes 25 minutes and 26 seconds on average to get back to the level of efficiency you were at before an interruption. This means task shifting, even briefly, can cost as much as 40% of productive time.

We believe that ‘Focus Friday’ will give our team time to proactively complete tasks at hand while reducing virtual meeting fatigue, preventing burnout, maintaining engagement, and boosting productivity. Uninterrupted. The internal planning and functions will still be completed with discipline before Friday or at the weekend.

‘Focus Friday’ is not a blanket policy because not all our teams operate the same way, and some work requires more collaboration than other kinds. Sometimes Friday is the only day they can get an important meeting on the calendar, or that’s simply the day the customer wants it.

We have continued business expansion throughout the pandemic and welcome enquiries from ambitious and driven individuals at any stage in their careers. To express interest in a position with Metro, contact Paul Moss, who heads our HR function. 

We continue to handle the current environment with innovation and by encouraging our team’s talent and development – with customer-driven satisfaction and expectations as our number one priority.