Charlotte Lockhart, chief executive and founder of 4 Day Week Global, said there had been statistically significant improvements in a range of wellbeing indicators. “Anecdotally, companies suggest that there has been an overwhelmingly positive experience with revenue and productivity levels, [that have] either maintained and in some cases improved,” Lockhart said in an Aug. 8 video interview. Improvements have been seen in indicators of well-being, including stress, burnout, sleep, family-work-life balance, and life satisfaction. Anecdotally, Lockhart said the reduction in work hours does not appear to have negatively affected productivity at this time, and in some cases, he said productivity has improved. “Everything we’re finding so far supports what we’ve always said and it’s interesting. But I think the important thing with this research is that we’re going to have empirical data that feeds into that,” Lockhart said. The trial is being conducted in the UK through partnerships between 4 Day Week Global and researchers at Cambridge, Boston College and the University of Oxford. About 3,300 workers are participating in the pilot program at 70 different companies, with all agreeing to have workers work 80 percent of their usual hours, with no changes to compensation or productivity. The trial began in June and will continue until November. It is based on a research framework created by Juliet Schor, an economist and sociologist at Boston College.

HOW IS THE PILOT

Dr. Rupert Dunbar-Rees, founder and CEO of Outcomes Based Healthcare, said in a video interview on August 17 that the company was looking for ways to improve productivity before participating in the world’s largest four-day workweek trial. “The four-day week is really the culmination of this exercise of trying to improve our productivity and really thinking about what we’re doing and how we’re doing it,” Dunbar-Rees said of the company’s efforts to increase productivity. The UK-based company has 11 full-time employees participating in the trial and working in a hybrid environment. However, implementing the shortened week was not without its challenges. Dunbar-Rees said that overall, it was “pretty smooth”. Early challenges included determining how the company would serve customers while better positioning the test for success. The company also had to follow HR policies, specifically whether the eliminated working day should count as annual leave and what to do with part-time workers who already work four-day weeks. During the adjustment period, Dunbar-Rees said flexibility was a top priority. “You always expect failure, but then you have to plan for failure,” he said, comparing the adaptation to the company’s work producing software for the National Health Service. Despite the minor challenges, workers are benefiting from the reduced hours, Dunbar-Rees said. He said the change was like a “proper three-day reset.” “On the positive side, definitely everyone on the team … has been able to do a lot of things that they just never would have done and come back much more refreshed on Monday,” Dunbar-Rees said. “So people get eye exams and go to the dentist and do endless amounts of living that otherwise wouldn’t happen,” he said. According to Dunbar-Rees, the shortened work week isn’t about cramming a five-day job into four. “Half the solution to a sustainable four-day week was looking to improve efficiency and productivity,” he said. Once key efficiencies are found, the other half of the solution involves identifying and eliminating low-value actions, which involves “relentless prioritization.” Dunbar-Rees said it’s possible the four-day week will continue beyond the trial period. “I don’t want to prejudge the outcome of the pilot, but I’d be surprised if we got to the end and said, ‘okay, let’s go back to the way we used to work,’” he said.

BOTTOM-UP APPROACH

The test’s operating principle dictates that workers receive 100 percent of their pay while working 80 percent of the total hours, with 100 percent productivity. This allows companies to measure and support employees on an individual basis, according to Lockhart. “How this [principle] it’s the essence of what we talk about in our program, in that it has to be bottom-up,” Lockhart said. Typically, organizations that dictate from the top down how employees will navigate the shortened week are the ones that fail to adapt, according to Lockhart. Inefficiencies exist and manifest in a variety of ways, Lockhart said, usually around meeting times. “What we’re looking for, in particular, is to define productivity, not employment,” he said.

TRIAL PROCEDURE

Organizations participating in the trial are starting by working with researchers to establish baselines, Lockhart said, in order to determine where the organization stands before the transition to the shortened week. The next step is to commit executives to making a pilot successful. “They don’t necessarily need to make part-time work successful. All they have to do is commit to resourcing and empowering the pilot appropriately,” Lockhart said. After that, an organization can begin to determine how the pilot will operate, while executives take an “empowering back seat,” he said. Once a pilot is designed, flexibility becomes key, Lockhart said.

POTENTIAL BENEFITS

John Trougakos, an associate professor of management at the University of Toronto, said productivity can remain stable amid reduced hours because it incentivizes organizations to become more efficient and reduce wasted time. He said he is also reaping the benefits of increased rest time for workers. “I think that’s the other side of the coin when it comes to the benefit of the four-day work week. That increases efficiency, and two, people can work much more productively when they feel better and when they’re more energized and when other elements of their lives are in balance,” Trougakos said. Reductions in employee burnout and sick days are among the reported benefits, according to Lockhart.
“It’s all about how you empower your people in their own jobs and give them the autonomy they need to do that, point number one,” Lockhart said. “Point number two, you remove irrelevant busyness from people’s lives. And so what we find, statistically, is that people feel they can do their work better in less time. So that helps with the whole burnout thing.” 4 Day Week Global is a non-profit organization working to support the adoption of a four-day work week from 2018.