Four day work week

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Wouldn’t it be great to work 4 days and then have a 3 day weekend!?

A much better ratio than 5 to 2….?

And four days for the same total pay as you get at the moment for five days of work.

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And this would be viable if we could do the same amount of work in four days as we currently do in five.? But surely that’s not possible??? Well, some companies think it is, and they are already doing it!

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The argument is that we waste quite a bit of time during our working day, and if we could get more efficient we could do a week’s worth of work in four days rather than five:? streamlining meetings and emails, working harder and being more focused, wasting less time etc.

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If you say to people “if you can do it in four then you can have a three day weekend” (and no reduction in pay!) maybe they’ll find a way!? You don't even have to work out the details yourself, just leave it to them to find ways to achieve it. The workforce will love it! Maybe that will then allow you to hire the best people and have a happy workforce with reduced sickness and absence, as well as still achieving your turnover and profit?

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The arguments and evidence are that people who work 4 days rather than 5 have less sleep deprivation, have better home relationships, have one day less commuting, and are happier and therefore more creative. You might actually get MORE from a week of them than you currently get from a team of tired 5-day-a-week people!

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Also we know that people who work SIX days a week, or five LONG days each week, don't achieve any more than the ones who work five normal days.? Overtime doesn’t work once it becomes a habit – the same amount of work and achievement just expands to fill the extra time.? So, what if FOUR days was the optimum without us knowing, if it was the total amount of work we have within us, and at the moment it’s just expanding to fill the five days we give it?? Certainly it often feels like that in many organisations!? Could we push it back into the four days it really needs, and have that wonderful three day weekend?

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The counter arguments are:

1.???? If you can become more efficient when moving to four days, why not do that anyway and be efficient for the full five days and get even more done?

2.???? Maybe we really don’t have 20% inefficiency hidden in our 5 days at the moment, maybe we are better than that?

3.???? Coverage – customers will expect someone to be there on Fridays.

4.???? Charging by the hour – people like lawyers would have one day less per week to charge to the customer.? And yet their wage bill is still the same – there is no pay reduction when we go to four day working.

5.???? Quality will suffer as people cut corners to get the jobs done in the reduced time.

6.???? We won’t know if we’re getting the same amount done because we don’t really measure what is achieved, only the time spent.

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There answers to all of these objections though:

1.???? As already discussed, maybe we just can’t get the efficiency gain and sustain it for five days a week, maybe there just isn’t the creative and work energy in human beings for us to do that, as shown by the fact that regular overtime doesn’t yield any more?? And besides, we currently are NOT getting those gains, and if a four day work week means we get the same total as we got before then we’ve not lost anything financially, and we’ve gained a lot of motivation and workforce loyalty.

2.???? “The savings aren’t there to be made”: I bet they ARE though.? It’s amazing how much more you can get done when you’re under pressure, or you’re really motivated.? Sustaining it for 4 days a week might be tough though! But you’d have three days to recover at the end of each week. The only way to really know is to try it.

3.???? Coverage: easy, some people have Mondays off and some have Fridays.? It’s not that different to working from home.? Easier to manage in fact, because people are in the office where you can see them, and no extra equipment is needed in people’s houses etc.

4.???? Charging by the hour: well, a fallback might be that some people, who charge by the hour, will have to continue to do five days, or do 4 days and get paid less so you can afford to employ 20% more people.? But better than this would be to find ways to work with your clients where they are charged a fixed price for the job rather than per hour, (which they might prefer anyway) ...and then you can find a way to get the job done 20% more efficiently, and the client is not affected.

5.???? If this is an issue then you NEED to be able to measure and control your quality!

6.???? If this is an issue then you are already in an out-of-control-situation, and you would already benefit massively from measuring outputs rather than hours input.? Working from home has highlighted this as an issue already – people can only work form home economically if you can measure what they produce, rather than hours worked.

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?So, what to do about this?

One way would be to just try it – say to just one trial team in your organisation “It’s a temporary trial: if you can do it in 4 days a week we will continue the trial.? If not then the default is that we’ll go back to 5 days a week” …and see if they can find ways to get the work done.? How great if they do!

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If anyone is already doing it, or wants to do a trial with one of their teams, please do let me know how you get on.? This could change the world!

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onwards and upwards

CC

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