We Piloted a 4 Day Work Week - Here Are My Thoughts!

I clearly remember the 1 on 1 in winter of 2023 where Jen L'Estrange sat across from me, looked me straight in the eye and said "Should we do a 4 day work week?" We had just hired a new team member who lived an hour away and Jen had recently been reading the outcomes from European pilot programs. As a company that supports flexible work, a 4 day work week seemed like it would be a natural expansion of that policy. And me, a frequent beachgoer, would really benefit from three days of sun and sand on the Jersey Shore. Like, really, are you kidding me? I survived Higher Education, where I was on call 24/7/365 and sometimes worked 7 days a week. Four days of work?!?!?! And logging off for THREE?!?! Dude, I'm sold.

As we near Memorial Day, the unofficial start of summer, and the start of our 4 day work week pilot, I felt it only appropriate to revisit the experiment and share my takeaways.

Our Considerations

First and foremost, we are an HR Consulting firm. Our ability to make money is directly related to the hours we are available to support our clients. Jen had long ago determined the magic mix of internal hours and billable hours that allowed the firm to be profitable. We determined we would still need to work 40 hours, just over the span of four days instead of five.

We did consider reducing the work week to 35 hours, and removing general business development time from the team's responsibilities. But, I am heavily involved in a local networking group (and would eventually be asked to join the board), and some other members of our team were starting to research high-value networking groups for themselves. As a company who offers sales commissions on closed business, it seemed counterintuitive to our incentive compensation program (one of our selling points because of our base salary limitations) to tell consultants that business development needed to done on their own time.

Additionally, our role as the outsourced HR department for companies meant sometimes our client's need us when we aren't in the office. But, outside of the breakneck pace of advising companies at the onset of the COVID-19 outbreak, I could count on one hand the amount of times a client needed me to immediately address an urgent issue outside of standard work hours. Although we knew certain clients would react differently, we also felt confident they would feel assured by our emergency availability and the idea we would be more productive with a greater level of availability, Monday through Thursday.

Philosophically, we agreed it could work. Especially since a 4 day work week seemed like a natural extension of our "Family First" value. Practically, we decided for the pilot program, we would all be off on Friday. In future iterations, if we decided to do it again, we would consider giving people the choice of what 4 days they would work. But for the trial period, consistency and ease of communication was important to us.

Finally, this would be a pilot program for the summer months. Between Memorial Day and Labor Day, Red Clover was going to test a 4 day work week. Summer made the most sense because some of our clients already offered some version of summer Fridays or kind of just accepted Fridays were going to be less productive. "It's Friday. Expect less" amirite? Internally, we wanted to team to be able to enjoy summer to its fullest, whatever that meant for them.

How Was It Received?

First, let's talk about the team reception. Generally, I think the response was positive. I mean, who doesn't like day off? Once the news settled, I think we were all a bit overwhelmed (but excited?) to try longer work days, because again, it meant a three day weekend. Some of the team members I thought would be over the moon excited actually had some individual practicalities that made them cautious adopters. We thought it would work for everyone after considering what we knew about their lives, but some team members had legitimate reservations about how it was an extension of "Family First", given their personal situations. We committed to monitoring the program and be open to feedback throughout the process, both formal and what would come up in passing discussions. If it wasn't working at all, we were willing to cut the pilot early.

Personally, I was excited. Having come from Higher Education, I was used to longer days, and in this situation, the reward was an extra day off for three whole months. My previous two employers offered either alternating Fridays off or half-day summer Fridays, so I was stoked to see a similar program mimicked in my current company. And even more exciting was I was key in implementing it as a member of the leadership team, and I was positive about the results and went into it thinking this was going to serve as our roadmap for a permanent 4 day work week in the future.

The majority of our clients were fine with it - some were even curious about its execution because they were considering it. This was directly related to our ongoing working relationships and the team had consistently demonstrated our abilities and value throughout the course of our engagements. We always make sure our clients have a point of contact when we take PTO, so this wasn't much different. And again, we would be available for any significant emergencies that needed our immediate attention.

We only had one client who had expressed serious concern. They were growing quickly, and for them, as they scaled, anything they viewed as urgent was an emergency. Whereas our experience tells us an offer letter can wait until Monday, they struggled with the idea of making a candidate wait for a formal employment offer. They perceived their desire to move quickly, at all costs, as in conflict with a 4 day work week. Because they were so embedded in client work from Monday to Thursday, they viewed Friday as they day they could focus on internal work. It was going to be a challenge for them to adjust their behavior to better communicate and work with us from Monday to Thursday to address their needs. We knew this was going to be an issue we needed to proactively address, and affirmed to them that someone from our team (they had three consultants assigned to their account) would be available to support them on Fridays. We wanted them to feel confident they had our support. Their concerns were reasonable, but not anything we hadn't planned for.

And that brought us back to one of the original debates Jen and I had as we considered implementation. Do we even need to tell our clients? If how we work speaks for itself, will they even sense the difference? Ultimately, we thought it important our clients know so we could successfully manage their expectations throughout the summer. Do I think some people then were intent on giving us things to do on Friday? Sure. But it was better than people feeling like we were ignoring them because we were all logged off on a Friday.

What Happened?

Honestly, we were tired. I think the long work days had an impact on the team. There was feedback about how it felt like we were cramming a lot of client work into a shorter period of time, and that impacted stress levels. The impression was that people felt like they need to be over-productive throughout the week in order to feel like they could truly take Friday off. We were working harder to try to ensure that a client wouldn't reach out on a Friday for a perceived emergency.

As a whole, we struggled with boundaries. If there's anything I've learned about this team, is we strive to deliver impeccable client service and do what we can to make the client happy. We generally like our clients and want to support them. But, a willingness to be available for a fifteen minute call on a Friday soon became a regular meeting. Or, we struggled communicating to clients that it was a "one time offer", and would need to really focus on having some of these discussions between Monday and Thursday. Or clients would "forget" it was a Friday when they texted us about something, and since we strive to meet our clients' needs, we would address the issue because it was easy to do. We didn't want a 4 day work week to be the reason why clients reconsidered working with us, so we all went above and beyond, but especially so on the Fridays we were supposed to be off.

And that's just the nature of consulting. When you are serving as an outsourced, fractional resource for a critical business function, your main goal is to be an effective partner for your clients. When two of our values are "Got Your Back" and "Get Shit Done", it's hard to not deliver to our clients, even when in conflict with our internal practices. This also just speaks to the type of team we have. We all struggle with saying "no", especially to a client who is a crucial piece of our business success.

On the other hand, we struggled with the nuanced conversation about availability. We received feedback after the pilot (and some employee departures) from clients that our team wasn't involved in mission critical HR events because a member of the team was unavailable on a Friday. Did the consultant fail to communicate appropriately? Did the client misunderstand them? Was it a combination of both? And even if, say, a client wanted to terminate an employee on Friday - their assigned consultant should've been available, or if they couldn't be for specific reasons, they had a responsibility to develop a plan to appropriately meet the client need. I thought I had effectively mapped out communication plans to our clients, but there was obviously confusion on how people communicated our schedules or how our clients interpreted our messaging.

It also didn't help that it seemed every Friday, after a stretch of beautiful summer weather, we would get rain. Obviously, the weather is out of our control, but we all probably would've been less frustrated and been more invigorated had we had decent weather on our scheduled days off. I'm a Jersey shore bunny, and it was maddening to work hard throughout the shortened work week only to be stuck inside on the couch because I couldn't go to the beach or the pool at the swanky St. Laurent . I might as well just work because there wasn't much else to do!

So, What Was the Outcome?

By the time we hit August, the team had summarily agreed that it was a worthwhile pilot, but that we wouldn't continue it into the year. We also wouldn't attempt it in Summer 2024. The longer work days tired us out, and specific clients acted as if nothing had changed in our schedules, so we all felt a little closer to burnout. Which was exactly what we were hoping to prevent.

Does this mean 4 day week won't work nationwide? Absolutely not. I think it's still an amazing approach to work - and I love that it's gaining attention on a federal level. Especially since it worked so well in Europe (even considering that Europeans have an incredibly different approach to work than us Americans.) I do think it could work if we tried it again at Red Clover...But what would I consider differently?

To note - these are my observations and don't necessarily reflect the opinion of my colleagues or the company.

32 Hours - Hindsight is 20/20. I think we could make it work if we only expected 32 hours of work from the team. It would impact some of our internal approaches to work and billable time, but if we were able to make the adjustments without impacting profitability, a true 4 day work week could work. Perhaps when we're larger and have more flexibility in resource assignment with less narrow margins and less internal work, we could make 32 hours work. We also saw some natural transition in our sales process and responsibilities, so the business development considerations that kept us at 40 hours may have naturally addressed themselves.

Economic Uncertainty - We piloted the program during a time when companies had significant concerns about an economic downturn. For some of our clients, despite our assurances, they may have felt they were getting less while still paying the same price. When everyone is looking at their budgets, that can be a scary prospect. So, they leaned into the Friday "emergency" availability to make sure they were getting their money's worth. In turn, as a professional service, we were hesitant to draw firm boundaries, because we are not immune to economic conditions, and we wouldn't want to lose a client due to perceived unavailability.

Clarity Around Availability - I think if the company, the country, and our clients were all in a different economic position, we would've felt more comfortable with being stricter in our boundary setting. We were navigating the unique relationship between client service to help them scale their businesses while implementing an an approach to work to scale ours. The natural tension between the two, and the timing of it, made it difficult for us to be firm in boundaries. I consider us a pretty progressive HR firm, and as a result of this pilot program and subsequent feedback, we had some great conversations about making sure our culture and our approach to work is aligned with our clients when we vet them as prospects. I think, in the future, we could balance a 4 day work week with client deliverables, and clients wouldn't care about (or feel) the difference.

Where Do We Go From Here?

At the end of the day, for me, the goal of 4 day work week was to provide more work/life integration for the team and give them a three day weekend during the summer. We thought it would increase productivity and help our team avoid burnout. I feel we were productive (maybe even moreso!), but the way we needed to structure the program for sustainability didn't seem to have a positive impact on staff well-being. It was hard to see my team struggling with something that was meant to improve their lives.

It's the nature of being a small consulting business that managers other business' HR, which is a critical business function. I think HR can take off on Fridays, but for businesses in transition and hyper growth, it can be hard for them to take a pause and wait for their outsourced HR team to return to the office.

In a few years, I think we'll be ready to try again. And I would welcome a 4 day work week. In fact, I'm convinced my body has muscle memory, because since the beginning of May, it's been trying to convince me every Thursday is a Friday. And I know if we ever get a federal bill passed (thanks Bernie!), Red Clover has the ability to implement a 4 day work week and also support our small business clients who want to do the same.