People & Culture at Blinkist. Founder of Aligned. Find me on LinkedIn.
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The four-day workweek has been a trendy topic for a while. All over the world, we are starting to question the 40-hour workweek, which has been the standard in the Western world since the Industrial Revolution. In 1940, the U.S. adopted a 40-hour workweek. A shorter workweek would be a way to increase productivity, improve mental health and even fight climate change. This trend has been accelerated by the 2020 pandemic, which sharpened issues around well-being, burnout and work-life balance.
In the last few years, we’ve even seen entire countries like the U.K., Spain and Iceland running experiments and taking measures in favor of a 32-hour workweek. For companies like Unilever or Buffer, it has become a powerful employer branding tool to attract and retain top talent in a highly competitive market. Time has become the new currency.
As an HR professional, how can you propose and launch such an initiative in your organization? In this article, I will share with you five tips on how to get started.
1. Find your 'why.'
Creating a solid business case can enable you to get buy-in from your executive team, which is crucial when making organizational changes. Ask yourself: What’s the problem you’re trying to solve? What are the pain points?
• Well-being: Is it mental health? For example, are your employees getting burned out?
• Employer value proposition: Is it about fixing your attrition leaky bucket by increasing total compensation beyond salary?
• Cultural evolution: Is it about becoming more agile and productive by nudging employees to work smarter?
Then write a one-pager that highlights the opportunities and threats of such an experiment. Make sure you include how long the experiment will last and how you will measure success.
2. Define success metrics.
A few things you could measure are:
• Business metrics (i.e., revenue)
• Productivity
• Engagement
• Sentiment (i.e., stress, creativity)
Be prepared to adjust your metrics as you go. It might be difficult to find objective measures of success to measure the impact of a shorter workweek since there are multiple internal and external parameters that influence business results, productivity and engagement.
Keep in mind that if you’re not already measuring productivity in your organization, it will be difficult to evaluate the impact of the four-day workweek. So, if you can, start measuring before the experiment starts so that you have data for comparison.
3. Figure out logistics.
Now that your proposal has been approved, you need to figure out the “how” with your people ops and legal teams.
• What does that mean for people who already work part-time? You can either decide to reduce all working hours by 20% or increase the salary of people who work less than 40 hours.
• Do you want to have a set day off for everyone on Friday or will you also allow people (i.e., parents) to work shorter days if they want to? Will you have a different policy for teams (i.e., customer service) who might need to be available five days a week?
• How will the four-day workweek impact your vacation policy? Will it stay the same or will you reduce the number of days people can take off?
• Do you need to issue supplementary agreements for your employees depending on which country they work from?
• How does the four-day workweek impact interns who may be required by their university to work 40 hours a week?
• Will you reduce the number of goals and objectives an employee can manage due to the four-day workweek?
4. Set clear expectations.
If there’s one thing that we’ve learned since the pandemic it’s that the future is more unpredictable than ever. What if another pandemic hits? What if your business results don’t look good? What if you have to lay people off? What if the experiment just doesn’t work?
The point is: You never know what can happen. You might have to go back to 40 hours at some point and you need to say it—which is why it’s important to frame it as a time-bound experiment to begin with. Set a clear timeline and transparent success metrics. Once you offer a new benefit to your employees it might be very difficult to take it away, so the earlier you set expectations the better.
5. Prepare your organization.
Switching to a shorter workweek will likely create friction in your organization. Your employees might wonder if they’ll still be able to meet their goals in four days instead of five days or if they’ll feel more stressed. On top of that, people will likely need to reevaluate how they work, which meetings they can eliminate or shorten, which tasks can be streamlined or automated, etc. Make sure you announce the experiment well in advance so that everyone has time to prepare and adjust.
Here are a few initiatives you could run:
• Launch productivity training sessions where you teach techniques like time blocking and boxing or how to "eat the frog." You can invite your employees to try out a browser extension that allows them to set daily limits for distracting websites or apps.
• Perform meeting audits. Encourage people to cancel meetings or shorten them by asking the following questions: What is the purpose of this meeting? Is there a clear, documented agenda? Do we need all attendees? Can any update be shared async? Can we achieve the same results in less time during this meeting?
• Lead a simplification workshop where people are encouraged to automate certain tasks. Ask questions like: Which tasks move me away from my goals or bring zero value? Can I create a template for task X? Can I document basic processes so that I don’t have to answer the same questions over and over?
No matter what happens, you will likely learn from this experience and even if you don’t continue it, you might have simplified the way you work. Good luck!
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