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Embracing the Four-Day Work Week

The concept of a four-day work week is stirring up significant interest globally, challenging traditional norms and promising a revolution in work-life balance and productivity. As we navigate the post-pandemic world, the push towards this model has gained momentum, with various countries pioneering the change and reaping its benefits.

Historical Shifts and Modern Productivity

The evolution from a six-day to a five-day work week marked a significant milestone in our pursuit of balancing work and life. With Henry Ford’s endorsement in the early 20th century, the five-day work week became a standard, heralding a new era of employee welfare and efficiency. Today, we stand at another pivotal moment, as studies reveal a 400% productivity increase since the inception of the five-day work week, challenging us to rethink how we can achieve even greater efficiency and well-being in our professional lives.

The Global Perspective: Lessons Learned

Countries like Spain, the UK, New Zealand, Belgium, and Japan have led the way in adopting a four-day work week, with remarkable outcomes. A Bloomberg study highlighted a seamless transition for over 70 UK companies, with a majority reporting substantial success in this new schedule. Closer to home, PRAXIS, a Toronto-based marketing communications agency, joined the 4-Day Week Global trial, aligning with 59 other North American companies to explore this model’s potential.

Tangible Benefits: Beyond Wellness

The shift to a four-day work week transcends employee wellness, offering substantial business advantages. From Perpetual Guardian’s 20% productivity boost in New Zealand to Microsoft Japan’s 40% productivity increase and significant reductions in operational costs, the evidence is compelling. This model not only promotes employee well-being but also drives efficiency and sustainability, presenting an attractive proposition for businesses and employees alike.

Managing the Shift: A Strategic Approach

Embracing a four-day work week requires planning and change management. Here’s how I propose to navigate this transformative journey:

The first step is understanding the current state of your organization. This involves assessing cultural readiness, existing workloads, and operational efficiency. It’s about asking the right questions: Are we operating at peak efficiency? Can certain tasks be automated or streamlined? This phase sets the groundwork for a successful transition by identifying potential barriers and opportunities for optimization.

With a solid understanding of your organization’s readiness, the next step is detailed planning. This involves setting clear objectives, defining success metrics, and developing a roadmap for implementation. Planning should also include stakeholder engagement, ensuring that all levels of the organization are informed and onboard with the proposed changes.

Before a full rollout, a pilot program is essential. This controlled trial allows you to test the four-day work week with a select group of employees, providing invaluable data on its impacts. Key performance indicators (KPIs) should be monitored closely, including productivity levels, employee satisfaction, and any operational challenges that arise. The pilot phase is crucial for fine-tuning the approach before a wider implementation.

Armed with insights from the pilot, the launch phase involves rolling out the four-day work week across the organization. This should be done gradually, allowing for adjustments based on departmental needs and feedback. Communication is key during this phase, as is continued monitoring of the same KPIs tracked during the pilot.

Finally, the sustainment phase focuses on embedding the four-day work week into the organization’s culture. This includes regular reviews of KPIs, continuous improvement initiatives, and maintaining open lines of communication with employees. The goal is to ensure the change is not only successful in the short term but is sustainable and beneficial in the long run.

Looking Ahead

As we stand on the brink of a potential work culture revolution, the four-day work week promises a future where efficiency and well-being are not mutually exclusive but mutually enhancing. The global and local evidence underscores the feasibility and benefits of this model, offering a blueprint for organizations ready to embrace change.

For those intrigued by the possibility of a four-day work week and seeking to understand the intricacies of such a transition, including insights from leaders who have embarked on this journey, I invite you to listen to our latest episode of Reroute Reflections. Join us as we delve deeper into this transformative topic and explore how your organization can navigate the path to a more balanced, productive, and satisfying work life.

For a deeper dive into the intricacies of this transformation, including personal insights and listener questions, I invite you to listen to our latest episode of the Reroute Reflections podcast. Join us as we explore the future of work and how we can collectively navigate these changes for a brighter, more balanced tomorrow.

Future of Work ≠ Return to Office (period)

Image Credit: Albert Tercero

“We have to remember that oftentimes it’s not the change that people reject, they are rejecting the fact that they are losing something.“

Firms such as the Royal Bank of Canada, Osler, Hoskins and Harcourt LLP, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), Apple and The Globe and Mail have mandated that employees must return to the office between two to four days a week as of last month. Some firms, while choosing not to mandate workers to return to the office have become far less enthusiastic about employees working from home full time.

It’s clear that employers were hoping that their workers would voluntarily opt to return to the office, especially as, in most parts of the country, life has essentially returned to a pre-pandemic state. However, recent data shows that foot traffic in office buildings in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver are still 55% below what it was in early March 2020.

The risks far exceed that of the employer’s real estate costs, the lack of foot traffic in these major metropolitan areas are having a significant impact on local small businesses and the economy. Some firms are also arguing that the lack of in-person collaboration has negatively impacted ideation and innovation, justifying the return to office as a means of restoring the “energy, spontaneity, big ideas and a true sense of belonging” that comes from working together in person.

However, we can’t ignore the many benefits (positive risks) associated with allowing employees to continue working from home.

Employees are able to improve work life balance and wellness by skipping their morning and evening commute. Employers are able to expand their talent pool to areas outside their headquartered location. Similarly, employees are able to seek out job opportunities outside their area of residence, including opportunities in different provinces to help alleviate the talent gap that has plagued businesses outside large, metropolitan areas across Canada for years.

In a recent survey, Mercer found that 61% of employees prefer to work from home. While this means that the majority of employees want to continue working remotely, it also means that 39% of employees prefer to work at the office. Is your organization experiencing a similar split?

Surveying your people to gather feedback about their workplace preferences is step one, it will give you a broad sense of the preferences across your organization, but it’s not the end goal.

What we sometimes fail to realize is that change happens one person at a time. Even large, complex organizational changes such as this one. The change is only successful if the impacted individual changes their behaviour and therefore, by extension, the organizational change is only successful if all the impacted individuals change their behaviour. In other words, it’s the cumulation of many individuals changing their behaviour from their current state to the desired future state that leads to a successful change. It’s important to think about any change in terms of the individual and how you can support each person through that change.

While this may sound obvious, it is constantly overlooked. You can see evidence of that in organizations that have issued explicit, overarching work from office mandates. These firms are failing to recognize that change happens at the individual level. The optimal return to office strategy will never be a one-size fits all approach, because your employees are individuals, each with their own reasons why they prefer to return to the office or not.

Employees who prefer not to return to the office may have a spouse who lost their job during the pandemic and the unnecessary expense to commute to and from work is not something they can afford, they may have moved outside a commuting zone during the pandemic and the time and expense of traveling to and from work multiple times a week is not feasible, or a host of other reasons why the individual you are looking to change is resistant. Until you understand what is causing the resistance at the individual level, you are approaching the change blind. This is a recipe for disaster, one that could translate into significant costs to your business, including, but not limited to, regret turnover, decreased productivity and morale, increases in medical leaves and more.

We also have to remember that oftentimes it’s not the change that people reject, they are rejecting the fact that they are losing something.

The change process and mourning process are very similar, if not identical. People go through a denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance phase in loss and change. We are asking people, in some cases forcing people, to incur a second drastic shift (or loss) in their work lives in as many years.

As leaders, you need to recognize that your employees will have varying levels of comfort surrounding this transition. You need to listen to your employees, validate their emotions and act on the input received. Does it make sense for a technical writer, for instance, to come into the office five days a week? Probably not so let’s not force compliance for the sake of it and really open our minds, and our hearts, to what makes the most sense for the business and the answer is always what makes the most sense for each individual employee.

If you are embarking on your future of work strategy, contact us today. We can help position this change for success by developing a customized and scaled approach that garners the commitment necessary to implement this change successfully across your organization.

The 4-Day Work Week: Is It Just a Dream?

What are the benefits and risks associated with this change?

One of the most popular trends in the global corporate world is the 4-day work week. In Canada, we have yet to adopt this model, though it has been adopted in other countries, including Spain, the UK, New Zealand, Belgium, and Japan. A Bloomberg study reported that 78% of leaders at over 70 UK companies that shifted to four-day schedules said their transition was good or “seamless”. Most (88%) said that four-day schedules are working well.

This concept is getting the attention of senior management as firms try to reduce their turnover rate and stay competitive amidst the aftereffects of the COVID pandemic. Locally, one Toronto company, PRAXIS, a marketing communications agency, announced it will join the 4-Day Week Global trial, along with 59 other North American companies.

Iceland has been piloting the four-day work week since 2015, they have seen significant improvements in overall employee well being following this change. Employees were less likely to suffer from workplace stress, anxiety, depression, and burnout. This has been further substantiated by Gallup, who conducted a poll in March 2020 and found that people working four-day weeks reported lower levels of burnout and higher levels of well-being compared to those working five- or six-day weeks.

However, this is more than just an employee wellness play, there are significant business benefits associated with this change. For example, a New Zealand company, Perpetual Guardian, reported a 20% productivity increase after switching to a four-day work week. Similarly, in Japan, Microsoft reported that implementing a four-day workweek led to a 40% boost in productivity compared to the previous year. Furthermore, one less day of work is one less day the lights are on at the office. Microsoft Japan saw a 23% reduction in electricity consumption and a 59% reduction in paper printing after implementing a four-day workweek.

A recent Gallup report estimated that millennial turnover costs the U.S. economy $30.5 billion annually. According to that same report, millennials rank work-life balance high on their list of priorities when considering employment options. A work schedule that provides employees with an additional non-workday a week may be attractive to your workers.

It’s clear that the 4-day work week has the opportunity to provide both employees and firms with a significant amount of benefits. However, implementation of a change of this magnitude is highly complex and there are risks that must be managed effectively. However, if you have the right tools and support to manage the change, the 4-day work week could be a blessing for your firm and employees.

Are you thinking about implementing a 4-day work week across your organization? Contact us, we can help!