4-day workweeks may not be as flexible as companies think they are

As employers experiment with ways to offer employees much-needed flexibility, many companies are looking at the four-day workweek as a possible solution — but it could be falling short of expectations.

More organizations are advocating for shorter workweeks, citing success metrics such as a 78% happiness rate amongst employees and a 63% easier time recruiting and retaining talent when this policy is in place, according to data released by 4 Day Week Global. However, a recent poll by Gallup found that employees who work four days a week are 5% more disengaged than employees working five days a week.

Can this policy be too good to be true? It depends on your end goal, says Nabeil Alazzam, CEO of software company Forma.ai.

“There's been plenty of large organizations that have rolled out four-day workweeks as pilots and have not continued on,” Alazzam says. “Is it that four-day workweeks are not the right thing, or is it that the way they're deployed actually sets them up for failing?”

Read More: The case for the four-day workweek

Fixing an unhappy workforce requires more than just a shorter workweek, Alazzam says. The underlying issues are much more complicated and require robust solutions that address employee engagement at the core. A four-day workweek may just be a bandaid over a bullet wound, he says.

“With the four-day workweek, you have to consider the pros and cons of executing on it,” he says. “The best outcomes are when all the parties at the table have an aligned incentive and everyone's chasing the same goalposts.”

Without that alignment at the start, a shorter work week could alienate employees who already feel disconnected from their employer, team or manager. Less time at work may cause employees who used to tolerate their jobs, to now hate them.

Employers should shift their thinking to quality versus quantity when it comes to their workplace. That takes deeper digging than simply consolidating work into a condensed time frame, Alazzam says.

Read More: ‘No way to live’: Why this company is rejecting a 40-hour workweek

“Without asking questions and coming up with a distinctive answer, it's unlikely that a four-day workweek on its own is going to drive outcomes,” he says.

Before turning to something that seems like a fail-safe solution, employers should look at the impact this will have on their organization. For example, different roles call for different schedules, meaning that some employees may find themselves encroaching on that fifth day more than others. This can cause a rift between employees who can take advantage of the extra day, and those who cannot, Alazzam says.

“Before [employers] dive in and implement a four-day workweek, they should be stepping back to think about the objectives they want to achieve,” he says. “Whether it's getting more flexibility, providing a better work-life balance for our employees or creating better engagement with the business.”