4dw, 1yo.

It was a year ago today that we switched everyone at Wilson Fletcher to a four day week (4dw). World events have overtaken us somewhat, but I promised I'd post our experiences as we went and the year mark is a major milestone.

For those that missed the original post, back in April 2019 we told the team that from May 1st we would be moving to a four day week model. The objective was simple: to improve our performance as a team by embedding more thinking time, rest and personal development into our weeks.

Our version of 4dw.

A brief recap on what we decided to do.

• Everyone would be paid the same but Fridays would become 'personal days' that each individual could use as they needed to. The only rules were that they couldn't take on other work (they're still employed on Fridays) and that how they spent their day had to contribute to what we described as 'four awesome days'.
• When there's a bank holiday Monday, we shift the week to Tuesday to Friday.
• We reset all holiday allowances and we made one work-from-home day a week a standard option for everyone. (It works out that the team gets something like 65 'non-working' days a year now [plus weekends] – roughly 30 paid holiday days across holiday allowance, bank holidays and days off between Xmas and New Year, plus another 35 Fridays.)
• We introduced a 'company day'. Once a quarter, we all get together on a Friday where our focus is to make the company better.

That's the pattern we adopted: there are others out there and I'd encourage you to do careful research before taking the leap.

Has it worked out?

This is the question I get asked most often. Well, let's put it this way, I cannot imagine ever reverting to our old pattern.

For the type of work we do (and that's definitely a caveat) the 4dw works really well. It gives us all the time to keep up with professional reading/watching/listening (which could be a full time job in its own right), and there has certainly been no down-turn in what we get done each week.

In fact, with no hard science to back this up, I'd say we get *more* done each week now than we used to. This supports the broader 'peak hours of mental capacity' research that underpins the 4dw concept (basically, more high-productivity hours per day are achieved when working four days than five, adding up to an overall gain across a week).

Impacts and challenges.

Time.

As I mentioned in some earlier posts, the 4dw pattern has definitely driven us to improve how we use our time and adopt more disciplined practices. Meetings take up less time for fewer people – while achieving more – although there's still plenty of headroom for improvement here.

Initially, some of us definitely felt more stressed about having 'less time to get things done', but that has fallen away as we adapted to the new pattern and what we can achieve each day steadily increased.

Culture.

We've always had a great team culture, but I think the 4dw has made it even better. For the most part, there's less stress when engagements are super-challenging and we all cope better with bumps in the road. There's simply more time to reflect and get new inputs and everyone is generally better rested than they were before.

Interestingly, despite introducing a work-from-home day as an option by default, almost no-one has used it across the year, possibly reflecting the fact that we have less time together as a team now, or that the additional day away from the office each week enables more flexibility for people each week anyway.

Headspace.

Reflection time is a key one for me personally. When you boil it down, we primarily sell thinking: ideas, new concepts, novel strategies, lateral solutions... call it what you like, our ability to think and leverage our collective expertise well is at the core of everything we do. Fridays, for me, have become a day to fuel my brain, but they've also become a time to chew on a problem or reflect on something.

I've had plenty of those 'breakthrough' moments – when something just clicks – on a weekend over the last year, which I put down to the time I'm getting to think, read and reflect on a Friday. It's kind of an in-between day, where it's fine to do work-related things like catching up on articles and books, or, for me, to sit with a notebook or a pad and mull over an interesting problem.

Clients.

Clients have been really supportive and I'm confident that those who have been working with us have seen nothing but positive impacts. A few have started to shift their own working practices after learning of our experiences and I'm sure many more would like to do the same.

We've had to attend a few things on a Friday over the year, which we feel is reasonable given that we can't expect clients to schedule everything around us... although most have been really respectful of our 4dw pattern. Diary management in general just needs a bit more care these days.

Value vs volume.

Production phases have arguably presented the greatest challenges. This is probably why it's a harder model to support in some companies than others. There's still a lot of output from our work, and where we've felt most pressure has been in the areas where it's more about producing those outputs than it is about the thinking that goes into them.

It's never been a major issue for us, but I can easily see how, in companies that have more value = volume or production-line driven business models, our 4dw approach wouldn't work (although other variants might).

If you decide to do it...

... don't expect an instant transformation. I think it took us a good six months to settle in to the 4dw pattern as our 'normal'. It's a bigger change than you'd think and it takes time for each individual to find their own pattern. Don't expect instant results: it just doesn't work that way. We're still working on details a year in. Be prepared to support people as they adapt: some find it harder than others to use an extra personal day, and it may not be who you expect.

I'd also caution against simply adopting someone else's approach (including ours). Think carefully about the nature of your company and how to make it work best: don't assume that what works elsewhere will work for you. Be creative with your approach.

On our 4dw anniversary.

Our first full years of four-day-weeking coincides with one of our quarterly company days, so as you read this we're 'together' figuring out how to make WF a better place. If you're reading later in the afternoon, we're most likely in a virtual wine bar continuing our discussion – with progressively less structure and more challenged pronunciation; a legacy behaviour that we're holding onto tightly. Some things just don't need fixing.

Either way, it's a Friday. And our Fridays have become a precious part of a new way to work. It's possibly not for everyone, but for those who think they can make it work, and are prepared to invest in it fully, I can honestly say that all in all it's just better.

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As ever, I'm happy to talk to anyone considering the change about our experiences, so feel free to message me here.