'There are some nuances that probably are still worth digging into,' says professor
The numbers are more than impressive: Employee burnout down by 17%; mental health improved by 17%; and work-life balance improved by 35%.
These are some of the stats coming out of a four-day work week pilot program, which followed 41 North American companies trying out the shortened week over 12 months, including nine in Canada.
Companies rated the impact of the shortened week to attract new employees an 8.7/10, with both productivity and performance scoring a 7.7/10 on separate scales.
Most impressively, 100% of the North American trial participants plan to adopt a permanent four-day work week, says a report on the initiative, created in partnership with Boston College, 4 Day Week Global, and Joe O'Connor, head of the Work Time Reduction Center of Excellence (WTR-CoE).
“Shorter working weeks are demonstrating that they're leading to happier and healthier employees,” he says.
“And that's being gauged across a whole range of different employee wellbeing indicators, seeing statistically significant increases in those. They're also leading to organizations who are finding it easier to attract and retain talent. And thenm perhaps more surprisingly, for some, we're also seeing that these organizations are finding themselves more productive and more efficient.”
Previous trials have been based on a six-month assessment from the research team at Boston College, says O’Connor, but this looks at a full year, “which obviously gives us additional information on the sustainability of this within organizations and being able to maintain that initial impact over a longer period of time.”
‘Most of these organizations are white collar’
The results are very promising, says Winny Shen, associate professor of organization studies at the Schulich School of Business at York University in Toronto — but it’s also important to consider that all of these companies opted in.
“To some extent, it suggests that maybe the four-day workweek is compatible generally with their organizational culture and their values,” she says.
“What we don't know is if, as things go on, a company might adopt a four-day work week for other reasons — for example, they feel like they need to be competitive within their industry — but it's not necessarily reflective of their culture or values, we don't know how it would play out in that case.”
A company that usually operates with long hours, expecting people to answer emails after hours, for example, might not do as well compared to these early adopters, says Shen.
“Most of these organizations are white collar organizations. And so I think we don't have a good understanding of whether or not a four-day workweek is equally beneficial in more blue collar occupations. That’s not to say that it wouldn't be but if it is actually promising, then I think something that's important to keep in mind is that we don't leave those workers behind.”
There are certain industries and types of work where a shortened week “is a lighter lift,” says O’Connor, such as those involving knowledge work, creative work or white collar work.
“What works for a tech company won't necessarily work for a call center operation, it won't necessarily work for a really service-oriented company that needs to be available to clients five days a week. But there are ways that you can structure this in order to maintain that service coverage and deliver those outcomes,” he says.
Some organizations are interested in the four-day week, but staff are overworking their contracted hours to such an extent that their baseline is maybe 50, 55 hours instead of 40, says O’Connor.
“My advice to them would be ‘You're not ready to contemplate a shorter working week, what you need to do is figure out how you're going to get to a baseline where you have enough balance and efficiency in the workday that you're working a little bit closer to your contracted work week.’ So… there's a different starting point, there's a different end goal, depending on the organization.”
This is less about size or sector being the determinant as to what attracts people to this, he says.
“It's often much more about culture and leadership mindset. This is something that is attractive to organizations and leaders that want to be ahead of the curve, that see themselves as innovators, and really are doing this as a means to differentiate themselves, and to give themselves a competitive advantage.”
In Canada, 41 per cent of employers are considering a four-day work week for employees and nine per cent are unsure, according to an earlier survey.
Does size matter?
In the study group, just three of the 41 organizations have over 100 employees while half had 11 to 25 employees and one-quarter had one to 10.
Most of the organizations that did participate were on the relatively small size, says Shen.
“That raises the possibility that a small organization might be more nimble, and in a small organization, employees are more likely to know each other and, therefore, be a little bit more willing to be adaptable and responsive to other employees when you're all working very closely and in a tight-knit, cohesive group.
“But things like scheduling gets much more complicated, the larger your organization gets… so I think there's some nuances there that probably are still worth digging into that we just don't know.”
When you look at the global picture, there are bigger organizations that are starting down this path, says O’Connor, “but I think it's clear that the volume effect is still in the SMEs, and I think that that largely comes down to the fact that SMEs, because of their nature and how they're structured, tend to be a little bit nimbler, a little bit more agile in terms of their decision-making processes.”
In some industries, or organizations, there are constraints around staffing and needing to be available, so employers need to be careful about offering a shortened workweek to some segments of their workforce and not others, says Shen.
“That can really create perceptions of inequality and unfairness within an organization,” she says. “Those are issues that organizations should be cognizant of, and thoughtful of in terms of how they schedule and how they make this available to as broad a segment of their workforce as possible.”
“Because I think a lot of the conversation around the importance of flexibility and work-life balance often leaves out those employees.”
Eight in 10 Canadian workers have concerns with the concept, according to a recent survey.
Backing out of the 4-day week
Another big consideration: What if the employer decides to go back to its old five-day model?
The recent study from Boston College shows this could be a challenge: 45% of the employees say they would require a pay increase of greater than 25% to return to a regular five-day schedule, while an additional 14% said that no amount of money would induce them to go back to a standard five-day week.
“I do suspect that it's something that might be difficult to walk back… even if the employer is clear that it's a trial,” says Shen, citing similar challenges when it comes to the return to the office after the huge rise in remote work after the pandemic.
“I do think that if employers trial this, they have to be prepared to be really responsive to their employees feedback. And even if they encounter some difficulties, that there is a really strong desire from the workforce, I think they have to be prepared to address that, or else their workforce could be upset.”
This is a very common concern that comes up with employers considering or trialling the four-day workweek, says O’Connor.
“There is some risk associated with that in terms of [employees] harboring resentment, in terms of backlash. But there are lots of ways that you can structure this and frame this that I think really helps them manage that — it doesn't eliminate it, but it certainly helps to manage that.”
That includes transparent communications, “so being really explicit that this is an experiment, and the success of this is linked to some very clear metrics that we've communicated very clearly and transparently in a way that people understand,” he says.
Instead of an employer “pulling the rug out” and going back to the model, it’s important to present the data that’s behind their decision, says O’Connor.
“That data needs to be very transparent and very clear to employees, so that, if a month in or two months into the trial, there are certain things that need some work, that they have the opportunity to course correct. And that's a really important element and aspect of this — really empowering people to feel like ‘OK, if customer service is an area that a month into the trial isn't working, we have the opportunity to change and to try and fix this.’”
‘This is not just a light switch’: Changing the way you work
To make the shortened workweek a success, an employer definitely has to do some homework and make necessary changes.
“This is not just a light switch, this is as much about changing the way that you work as it is about changing the number of hours that people spend at work,” says O’Connor.
That includes committing to a genuine reduction in working time, he says.
“This can't be what we would call a compressed-hour work model, where you're squeezing the same number of hours into fewer days — there has to be a genuine reduction in work time. And they also need to maintain salary.”
On the other side, employees need to commit to maintaining output, which is measured in different ways for different organizations, says O’Connor.
“To do that in less time, they need to commit to increasing hourly productivity.”
He refers to the concept of Parkinson's Law, which is the idea that a task expands to fill the time that's available for its completion.
“Effectively trialing a shorter workweek almost acts like the reverse of Parkinson's Law, by putting an intentional constraint around time... that really puts pressure on your systems, on your processes, and drives changes to work practices, streamlining operations, improving processes within the organization.”
And if the shorter working week is made contingent on hitting certain targets, achieving certain objectives and business goals, employees are very focused and motivated to do what's necessary to find those efficiencies and to make it work, says O’Connor.
“We're talking about things like attacking overlong, unnecessary meetings; distraction and interruption in the workday; how you use technology, outdated processes — all of these things are very much on the table in terms of addressing those issues and those inefficiencies.”
In addition to the operational changes, there's also the psychological and behavioural element to this, which is a very powerful incentive, he says.
“This is something that is genuinely life changing and transformative for people, in a whole host of different ways.”
