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Less emails, less meetings: the four-day work week is picking up steam for good reason

Business / analysis
Less emails, less meetings: the four-day work week is picking up steam for good reason

The four-day working week is picking up traction as a large trial ceases, and many of those who gave shorter work weeks a go now want to make it permanent.

About 100 firms in the United Kingdom are signing up to a permanent four-day week for all of their employees, with no change in how much they are paid, after the companies found the truncated time at work led to better productivity, happier staff and saw improved recruitment.

One of the biggest firms to decide to make a four-day how they work for good is marketing company Adwin. Its boss, Adam Ross, says adopting the four-day week was “one of the most transformative initiatives we’ve seen in the history of the company”.

“Over the course of the last year-and-a-half, we have not only seen a tremendous increase in employee wellness and wellbeing but concurrently, our customer service and relations, as well as talent relations and retention also have benefited.”

And another new four-day workplace in the UK, Atom Bank, says it saw a 500% increase in applications for job vacancies, and in August of this year it reported productivity had increased by 92% through the four-day trial period.

The four-day work week is being championed by New Zealander Andrew Barnes, who has been telling anyone, or any firm, that wants to listen how revolutionary a shorter week has been.

Barnes has gone so far as to launch a global campaign, and the latest adopters from the UK are a result of Barnes’ kicking off the conversation with his own firm, Perpetual Guardian, adopting the four-day week in 2018.

The UK companies took part in a trial through 4 Day Week Global, which saw about 70 firms sign up to measure how the four-day week worked for them.

At the halfway point the results were strong. Of the 41 companies who responded to a survey, 35 of them said they were “likely” or “very likely” to continue with the reduced working week after the pilot ended.

Countries are also riding the short-week wave.

Belgium introduced legislation earlier this year to allow workers to choose a four-day week if they wanted it.

Belgian prime minister Alexander de Croo announced the employment measures in February, and said he hoped the four-day work week would make the Belgian labour market more flexible.

"The goal is to give people and companies more freedom to arrange their work time," he says. “If you compare our country with others, you’ll often see we’re far less dynamic."

And closer to home, Unilever is to extend its trial of a four-day working week to 500 employees in Australia after a successful 18-month pilot in New Zealand.

Placid Jover, chief talent officer at the global giant, says the firm had positive results from paying about 80 staff full salaries for four rather than five-day weeks in New Zealand, and absenteeism had dropped by a third during its New Zealand trial.

“We’ve had strong business performance, high engagement, people feeling happier, and time spent in meetings also coming down,” Jover says. “When we look at the world of work, we think that companies that master the art of offering flexibility will become more attractive employers with more engaged workforces.”

And staff reported steep drops in stress and work-life conflict, Jover says.

For those who hate meetings, good news. Part of the time savings  Unilever found came from cutting down on meetings. Meeting time was cut by a typical three to 3.5 hours per person per week during the New Zealand trial, Jover says, and staff also sent fewer emails.

The overarching argument in favour of the four-day week is that there is a lot of wasted time built into the traditional five-day working week. We're just there because we're there - but are we actually making a difference? 

Silicon Valley consultant and author Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, who is doing some work with 4-day Global, says the four-day week is already there, it’s just buried under “all this time wasting stuff”, or tasks and admin that don’t contribute to strategic business goals.

The momentum for the four-day week seems to be hitting a tipping point. Along with the widely reported success of the UK trial, there is interest in Scotland and Wales in adopting a four-day week, with trade unions in vocal support.

Whether the four-day week can crack the US is another question, but since the results of the UK trial the movement even seems to be gathering some steam there, and also across the border into Canada.

The hope is that by focusing on getting runs on the board, rather than bodies in the office, productivity will improve and workers will get a precious day back. 

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39 Comments

Several  years ago I was regularly visiting Unilever's Sydney business. It was a standing joke amongst the blue collar shift working people that the marketing & management carpark usually emptied out around noon Fridays for the weekend, so their productivity probably will not be noticeably affected by taking out a day.

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Running a business  in the USA it soon became apparent how much dead time was about simply because staff had very few holidays. Most got two weeks annual leave. Public holidays annually numbered only  six or so. What happened for example at Thanksgiving, the staff started “dropping off” in anticipation at the beginning of the week and on return, remained in holiday mode for just as many days. Because they had little time off, around us many outfits worked Saturday mornings too, all business was approached with a casual expenditure of energy, they all paced themselves, no idea of urgency and that was both perilous and galling, particularly when dealing with a highly valued perishable product. What NZrs would politely describe as slack. Yet their  equivalent of our Chamber of Commerce proudly claimed Americans were industrious, productive beyond all other nations. Just need to look at the hours they work. Blimey!

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4 working day will divide society into two classes.

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We already have the separation of those that can work remotely and those that can't, therefore what is the difference in adding another factor? The result would likely be an even tighter labour market in 5-day jobs and higher pay to compensate for this to make it more attractive, and the market would find equilibrium of it's own volition. Money or time, this tradeoff will always be there.

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Yep - once staff get used to a 4 day week they can be paid less

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Grattaway,

Your comment on this subject is on a par with your views on climate change-Neanderthal.

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Money or time, this tradeoff will always be there.

That's where the issue lies. We need to stop focusing on time and look at productivity/efficiency instead.

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There are programmer stories about K-LOCs in the 80s, where contract devs would be paid based on the complexity of the programs they were writing. They would use K-LOCs to determine the complexity, a K-LOC is one thousand lines of code. K-LinesOfCode. Looking back, it's easy to think that's absurd! Valuing potentially unnecessary verbosity in work.

Much like today, it depends on the work you do. An old job I had provided an hourly rate for a service and religiously followed timesheets. When work was complete, people would hang around until the end of the day doing nothing, interrupting others then go home at 5. Another job I had in my teens was similar, each "job" was quoted with travel time between the office and the site - so you could save at least an hour a day just by finding an efficient route around town. What happens to this hour?

Some jobs require people to be engaged nearly all of the time. But others simply don't. If you give a job to an employee and they get it done to a high standard in half the time, why should they not be rewarded? Turn up, do your job, go home. It's all I expect, and I trust people with the work they do. If I enforced a strict schedule on anybody, I would be showing them that I don't trust them to do they job they're paid to do. Regular and consistent review cycles takes care of any uncertainty. Works in my industry, definitely can't say that for all.

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Businesses are about wanting to maximise productivity, as labour is a cost. If someone can do 5 days work in just 4 days, then that means they are not being as productive as they could be within that normal 5 days. So they could be doing more work. 

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You're forgetting that working at a higher pace often takes more energy and often I'll find there's just not enough there. Yes could be doing more work.. invest in tools, ERP etc.. efficiency, ok now we're talking.

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But time is the proxy for efficiency/productivity it seems...to be fair, can be very difficult to measure efficiency/productivity in many roles

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unfortunately in all these discussions about market forces, and the market finding its balance --  we miss the fact that some services are not optional  - particularly health services which are 24/7 and 7 days a week. 

I have no challenges filling monday to friday daytime roles --- but evenings, nights, weekends public holidays - a different matter -- and no i cant simply increase pay -- as for many of these services the income is fixed and rates are incredibly poor --  and yes four on four off -- 10 hour shifts and all sorts of other creative options are on the table -- but ultimately we cant reply on teh market to balance itself out -- There are currently over 1000 empty older adult/dementia care/rest home beds  - purely because there are not enough staff available to keep them open - 

It may be a simple trade off in banking, insurance, retail -- but no way is that going to work for our healthcare system.  

You would also be aware of Corrections huge advertising campaign -- which is being marginally effective -- but young people simply dont want to go work in a prison -- where they are disconnected from social media for 9 hours at a time --- never mind the risk of assault , personal abuse etc ---    yet again -- this is not an optional the market will find a way situation ...  

 

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Yes this is the counter to my post just above. It simply does not work everywhere and creates massive competition in some industries.

I recall a neighbour from my childhood being a prison guard. Must've been late 30's early 40's. He'd bought a nice 3br home for him and his partner who worked in retail. Tonnes of knick-knacks in their home too, loved visiting. Can you imagine those careers providing a family home now? My mother worked in hospice care, bought her own home as a solo mother. Times have certainly changed.

There are many hard workers out there, I don't doubt that. But the wages for these jobs are unappealing to young people.

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"It may be a simple trade off in banking, insurance, retail -- but no way is that going to work for our healthcare system."

And that should point out the obvious. Banking insurance and other such financial service jobs produce 4/5 of fa and yet are paid/valued way above health care.

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Most shift jobs I have worked have had 4x10 rosters. I think it works especially well for night shifts where you do more of a covering/monitoring role. The great thing about having 3 days off was that when I came back for my 'monday' shift I felt much better than after a two day break. For 24/7 operations this is just one way to slice up the hours and - I know some nurses who do 3x12 (or 4x12 if they want some overtime). My main issue with night shifts was not the length of time or the weird hours, but the fact that there was almost no extra compensation (something like 5% more than the day shift rate). 

Some of my friends in finance do 4x10 but find it quite stressful as they have to pack a lot into those days. In industries like law or accounting (salaried professions) overtime is an expectation anyway, so its not always comfortable for these firms to adopt a policy that more explicitly focuses on hours. When I worked at a Big 4 accounting firm people would easily clock up 40 hours by Thursday morning. Even if they adopted a 4 day week, I think Friday would still end up a work day for many. 

I'm just happy that we now have more options to be honest. 

 

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by interesting1234 | 6th Dec 22, 3:06pm

Money or time, this tradeoff will always be there.

That, right there is the bit people just don't seem to comprehend. We've been raised to 'understand' that work is 40 or more hours per week, 5 or more days per year, for about 50 years, and people structure all their life around that without ever stopping to question it. They take on decades of debt simply because it's what everyone else does They buy bigger houses, bigger cars, bigger families than they need, boats, holidays, one upping the neighbours in the constant Johnses cycle. All the while sacrificing their freedom to pay for all these things that are mostly surplus to their needs. And all the while chained to the seemingly unending grindstone of work.

I've spent the majority of my career working 3 / 3.5 / 4 days per week. I quit my first 5 day/week job when I realized it didn't need to be that way and my employer was too myopic to imagine any other way to work. I'm now retired in my 50's, he's still working in his 70's

The old way involves working until you're essentially of diminishing value to your employer, and getting past the point of properly being able to enjoy your free time once you finally get it. We give our best years to our jobs, and are left with our worst years (physically, mentally) for our retirement.

Maybe people are short changing themselves. Open your minds, make some changes to your expectations. There's still a life to be lived outside of work if you don't make yourself a slave to money.

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Removing the commute takes a huge sting out of the tail of a regular working week. It's probably a sensible middle ground. 

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you need to elaborate more

by the sound of it what you mean is something that will make me furious, but I can give you the benefit of doubt

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If 4-day working week is such an improvement over 5 days, then let's go for a 3-day week instead to get even more productivity gains.

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80/20 rule can apply down to the fractal level. If 80% of the work can be done in 20% of the time, why don't we ( sorry not available for the rest of this comment).

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The benefits are guaranteed to fade away, especially if more companies join the trend and one loses the joy of comparing their sweet 4-day week to the rest of the schmucks around them.

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I was doing a 4 day week. The trick is, you need staff to take up your slack. 

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Then you're probably still working more than 4 days.

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So the theory is that businesses need to invest in productivity more.

But if their staff work less they're more productive, apparently.

So they actually need redundancies to make them more productive, no further investment necessary.

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The average office worker spends an average of 3 hours a day doing actual work. If you reduce to 4 days a week and everyone is more productive by an hour then its a win. In practice the productivity increases more than this.  

 

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My income depends on people paying me for my services. I will have to increase my charge out rate to compensate for only working 4 days. my customers will either accept this, or they will use my competitors who work 5-6 days a week. Let me see, which option will they choose?

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You could try pricing your projects on scope and not by the hour.

My employer did that when we went down to 7.2-hour days instead of the traditional 8-hours. Fees remained the same and quotes went out estimating 10% fewer hours than previously expected, but 11.1% higher charge out rates.

We still achieved good recovery rates because staff could deliver the same outputs with 4 fewer hours worked each week, i.e., became more productive.

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Why wouldn't you just increase your charge out rates and keep the number of hours worked?

This highlights the issue when talking about productivity, it's only quantifiable by $$$, so a company can appear more productive, but be just charging more for the same thing.

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Couldnt you just adjust to a lower income ? I have done this in the past, the pay off is less time working, more time with family/navel gazing.

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Good to see markets driving this rather than governments. 

Will be interesting to see how working hours and patterns change as work is relentlessly automated.  Wouldn't be surprised if more and more of us end up on-call to support machines when something has come up they can't handle. Imagine that as a call from some AI:

"Bob, look it's the factory here.  The SR217 has stopped with a 350 error and the bots can't sort it.  You are the next human on the list, so, congrats.  I'll flick the lights on for you when you arrive any time in the next 25 minutes."

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I was involved in negotiating a 4-day working week.

In Sydney, in 1980.

Arranged to keep machinery going through rolling smoko/lunch breaks instead of stop-start, and 4x 10-hr days.

Worked out 44% more efficient, output/hour.

Yawn

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Tried to get an employer to take me on for 4 days a week some 20 years ago, they were not interested, even if I did 10 hour days. Not going to happen in NZ, people are having to do more and more hours just to pay the bills or even get a second job. The 4 day week is a pipe dream, but I have found that the real goal in this country should be zero days a week.

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Sigh..it's already happening Carlos, did you not read the article? How about we buy less shit, live in smaller house and work less?

Live to work or work to live.

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That is a noble idea, however if one wants to live to an old age, you likely need extra gas in the tank. I can already see oldies now coming unstuck, because they thought retirement would never catch up on them. 

So you really need to buy less shit, live in a smaller house, and still punch out a decent amount of hours. Maybe that 5th day off is people sacrificing their retirement years for today. 

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The market is forcing the 'smaller house' thing on us whether we want it or not. 

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Which only works if you own some capital. 

So the goal should be, be more 'productive' with your time, i.e. ensure you get rewarded as much as you can for your time, and invest the surplus in some form of capital that provides you with ongoing income (shares, property, etc). 

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The average office worker spends 3 hours a day doing actual work. Reducing to 4 days only needs to improve the productivity of the average office worker by 45mins a day to break even. In practice the increase is much more. 

If you're interested Johann Hari talks about the 4 day work week in one of the chapters of his book "Stolen Focus" 

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I need to get me one of those 3 hours of work jobs! Stuff physical work. Wait why are we crying out for minimum wage fruit pickers again?

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You want to know what's really wasteful? bosses who don't give a flying f**k. Endless paper and just pushing excel spreadsheets around in emails and manually updated lists on emails. Really what is needed is investment (and I mean real change) in processes. In little NZ, it's easy to fill a niche or area, and occupy it inefficiently and not be given a run for your money. Yes I'm busy every day 80+% of the day but how much could be automated? Probably most of that relatively easily. But the boss doesn't care. It's incredibly frustrating. What to do but move on? I've put my resignation in.

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