Is The 4-Day Work Week Worth It?

19 May

Since the start of the COVID-19 Pandemic, the desire for work flexibility amongst employees has transitioned from a want to a necessity.

Working from home has increased working hours by about 10%, and employees are currently more likely than ever to work on the weekends [1]. This is probably not what employees had in mind when they were hoping for more flexibility back in 2019.

Can the workplace do yet another pivot to restore work-life balance through a four-day work week?

As we slowly exit the pandemic, this idea is timely now more than ever. This trending topic could not only change the current norms of our work schedules, but also prove beneficial to employee productivity, health, and happiness.

Challenging the Assumptions of the 4-Day Work Week

2 Methods For The 4-Day Work Week

Generally, there are two ways to do the four-day workweek, each with advantages and disadvantages for interested organizations [2]:

The first being to cut down from 40 hours to 32 hours, keeping schedules relatively the same for the remaining 4 days. It’s basically condensing 8 hours out of the work week that may be inefficiently spent to begin with.
The second method challenges individuals to work 40 hours in four days, roughly 10-hour days, and only then are they rewarded with the three day weekend. One might call this the work hard play hard model.

We can, however, still get creative with different combinations altering either the hours or salary of employees.

Why The 5-Day Work Week?

Before diving into the how, it’s important to have a clear understanding of the why behind the status quo. “Why do we work five days a week, and eight hours a day anyways?” This traditional schedule was adopted a long time ago, during the first industrial revolution, based on the needs of a factory-based work environment. While the majority of us no longer work in factories, we have seldom tried to venture beyond it.

But as Winston Churchill said: “Never waste a good crisis.”

Now Is The Time To Change

Amid all of the COVID-related disruptions to the workplace, now is an excellent time to experiment with the four-day work week. If this works, it could increase productivity, employee well-being, worker flexibility, and ultimately your bottom line.

Consider the case of a law firm in New Zealand that tried the four-day workweek, reducing hours from 40 to 32 and keeping the same pay [3]. 45% of employees reported improved work life balance, 27% reported reduced work stress levels, 20% of employees said that they gained productivity, and overall they had better attendance [3]. There was no change in job performance [3].

If you're seriously considering implementing a four-day work week though, there are some important things to think through. The four-day work week is not a one-size-fits all solution, so there needs to be careful consideration of the implementation.

6 Questions To Consider Before Implementing The 4-Day Work Week

How would it affect your business; your team?
Think about what kind of company you are. If your business would grind to a halt with everyone taking Fridays off, then you need to further explore more creative options. Maybe half your team takes Mondays off, and the other half takes Fridays.
How would this affect collaboration? Would there be a rotation of who gets what day off? There may be systems worth implementing so that teams are continuously and effectively communicating to get the work done.
What challenges would it introduce for your employees?
Maybe your employees can’t accommodate a four-day work week with longer hours (i.e. 10 hour days) due to childcare or other personal needs. Some rely on the 9-5 escape from their home life, and are seeking a balance with work.
As a leader, these challenges should be anticipated and accounted for. Can you subsidize childcare for longer days? Is the 32 hour version more feasible for your team?
If you choose to give extra days off, what are you doing to decrease the workload or meeting times?
The four-day work week demands some critical restructuring of the work day. Inevitably, working 10 hours in a day may be less productive, and require more breaks than an 8 hour day.
Leaders and managers need to evaluate their expectations, keeping in mind that overloading their employees for four days may cause more problems than what they started with.
As a leader, can you deliberately add breaks into everyone’s schedule? Can you actively evaluate the workload or your team members, and support them by calibrating it as needed? Try limiting the number of meetings you schedule, or the length of meetings scheduled, as part of this calibration process.
If you’re a public facing company, how else could you modify the 5-day work week?
If your services are required by the public Monday to Friday, or all seven days of the week, there is an opportunity for more creative options in the 4-day work week. What if your team worked six days, and each day was shorter? Is there seasonality to the business’s services?
Perhaps employees could work every Friday in the winter, but then get every Friday off during the summer. As a leader, you could offer two personal days a month, and let the employee choose when to use them. The goal of the four day work week is to maintain the quality of services offered while improving the quality of life of the team, which could lead to improvements in productivity and reduce burnout.
How do you plan on measuring productivity and employee wellness to know that the 4-day work week was the right call?
The best way is to promote a workplace culture that permits transparent communication and feedback. Find ways that employees can regularly check-in about how this is working for them, or where they might be struggling. Respond to this feedback.
You can do a health check with our ready made tools, like the Resilience Roadmap.
What are some finer details worth thinking through?
An idea like the four-day work week is all about the implementation. Should employees continue to receive the same salary? Does it make sense to hire more employees with smaller workloads?
Let’s not forget about clients. How would a four-day work week have minimal impacts on them? With employees having so many days off, what would holidays look like?
We know that vacations are important (Read more about mini vacations here), so how could they be restructured to better align with the philosophy of the four-day work week?

These questions are designed for deep thinking. It takes a good leader to answer each one, and fully figure out this option of a four-day work week. Above all else, do not forget to ask your employees. What works best for you as a leader needs to work well for all of them.

More On The 4-Day Work Week

Join us on The Science of Work Podcast to further explore case studies of the four-day work week. In Episode 9 “Should We Work A 4-Day Work Week?”, we go back as far as 1914 to see what Henry Ford trialled for the ideal work week and productivity. How would you begin to implement the four-day workweek? What would that look like? Take a listen to find out.

Consciously design your day, or someone else will.

References

Kost, Danielle. “You’re Right! You Are Working Longer and Attending More Meetings.” HBS Working Knowledge, 14 Sept. 2020, hbswk.hbs.edu/item/you-re-right-you-areworking-longer-and-attending-more-meetings.
Bird, Robert C., "Four-Day Work Week: Old Lessons, New Questions Symposium: Redefining Work: Implications of the Four-Day Work Week - The Four-Day Work Week: Views from the Ground" (2010). Connecticut Law Review. 66. https://opencommons.uconn.edu/law_review/66
“The Four-Day Week.” White Paper, 2019, 4dayweek.com/four-day-week-trial.

Dr Lisa Belanger

Lisa has a Ph.D. in Behavioural Medicine, an Executive MBA, and is a Certified Exercise Physiologist and High Performance Specialist.

Vist Lisa's Website

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