Do shorter workweeks shortchange learning?

(A longer version of this article is available at Strategy + Rest.)

Last month I saw a couple article articles that argued that while the 4-day week might be good for workers in the short run, it could have an unintended downside. It started off with an article in Business Insider arguing that "there's one important downside to the 4-day workweek, even if it does make you more productive:"

A shorter workweek could mean less time for opportunities that may advance an employee's career in the long-run, like networking with important industry peers....

For example, a person working only four days per week may decide not to have lunch with a colleague or client that could have led to an important project in the future because he or she didn't have expendable time to do so.

I put the question to several leaders of companies who have moved to 4-day workweeks, who I all interviewed previously for my book SHORTER (US | UK) and I got a very different perspective.

Natalie Nagele, the CEO of Wildbit, responds:

Working on the wrong things is exactly what shorter, intentional work weeks set out to solve. With a shortened week you spend your energy prioritizing on what matters. You trade “urgent” for important. At Wildbit, we didn’t just drop a work week and continue to work as we did 5-days. We reflected on how we work as individuals, and how we work together. We dropped unnecessary meetings, prioritized asynchronous communication, and most importantly, started to really focus on longer term planning. This extends past the product to each individual. We’re asking everyone to set their goals for the year, and then prioritizing them throughout the year to make sure they are making progress towards their own career ambitions.

Here's Henrik Stenmann, the cofounder and CEO of IIH Nordic:

For us, the shorter work week has meant transforming our business and adapting techniques, habits and technologies to improve productivity. This doesn’t mean we rush through work to get the job done, we simply do them faster by applying the proper techniques. This still leaves our employees time, energy and motivation to do things like upskilling, networking with industry peers, etc.

Now, there is an interesting question around how many hours per week are necessary for professional development, for the maintenance of skills, and for learning new ones. The most detailed debate I've seen about this issue is in medicine, around the length of time residents need to develop into competent doctors. Anupam Jena, in the Harvard Business Review, recently wrote about this debate in the article "Is an 80-hour workweek enough to train a doctor?"

In 2003, new rules were implemented in the US that limited hospital residents' workweeks to 80 hours, and individual shift lengths to 24 hours. The idea was that this would cut down on fatigue-related accidents, but some doctors worried that "the quality of medical training would be diminished by a shift-work mentality, an erosion of professionalism, and an inability of doctors-in-training to witness firsthand the hour-by-hour progression of a critical illness."

However, his research found no significant difference in treatment outcomes for patients who saw doctors who'd been trained under the older 100+ hour rules, and those who had trained in 80-hour weeks. Of course, medical residencies are also highly structured, and are designed to impart a lot of knowledge to young doctors, so you could argue that in less structured environments, people may need more time to absorb and learn.

But as quotes from company leaders who've switched to 4-day weeks suggest, many of them invest in programs and activities. And here are lots of other things these companies to do ensure that a 4-day week offers plenty of space and structure for learning and professional development-- as I explain in detail in the book.