TGI...Thursday? Embracing the 4-day work

Deanna Cuadra, Associate editor, Editorial, Arizent; Lauryn Sargent, Culture Storytelling Expert, Co-Founder & Partner, Stories Incorporated; Joe O'Connor, CEO, 4 Day Week Global

Transcription:

Deanna Cuadra (00:11):

All right. Good morning everyone. It's good to see you on our last day of our conference here in Austin. Oh, you can't hear me? Is the mic? Oh, there she is. There she is. Okay. Sorry. Good morning. If that's, that's what you missed. Welcome to TGI Thursday, embracing the four day work week. I'm very excited for you guys to be here. We're have a wonderful conversation on not only how to achieve a four day work week, but some of the benefits and of course some of the challenges. I have two wonderful speakers with me here today. Lauryn Sargent, co-founder and partner at Stories Incorporated, a company that has succeeded in a 32 hour work week, and Joe O'Connor, CEO of Four Day Week Global a company that is dedicated to helping other companies achieve four day work week. Right. Before we jump in, I do want to give a chance for both of our wonderful speakers to introduce themselves and talk a little bit about the respective companies.

Lauryn Sargent (01:05):

Yeah. Oh sure. Okay, first, Hi, hello everyone. I'm Lauryn Sargent. I'm a Co-Founder of a company called Stories Incorporated, and we are experts in organizational storytelling and recruitment marketing content through employee stories. Our company has transitioned to a four day work week. It's been almost two years, and we did roll it out. So I'm excited to share my experience for you because it's actually been with you. It's been a really great experience, not only for me personally, but also our organization has really benefited from having a four day work week.

Joe O'Connor (01:38):

Hi everyone. My name is Joe O'Connor. I'm the Chief Executive Officer with Four Day Week Global. We're a not-for-profit company that was founded in New Zealand back in 2019 by an entrepreneur called Andrew Barnes, who pioneered the four day work week in a trial in his own company, perpetual Gar in 2018. And since then, we've been supporting companies all over the world to help them to trial or transition to what we call reduced our productivity focused working. Looking forward to the conversation with you all.

Deanna Cuadra (02:06):

All right. Well, to first start, I'm going to allow Joe to jump in and tell you a bit more background on the history of the 40 day week, and of course 40 week global. Yeah.

Joe O'Connor (02:18):

Okay. Great to be here everyone. So just to talk to you a little bit more about my organization, four Day Week Global, as I mentioned in addition to supporting companies to make the switch to shorter work weeks, we also engage in research on the impact and the benefits of reduced our working and engage in advocacy about the concept. But effectively everything we do is based around this concept of the 100 8100 rule. So when we talk about the four day work week, we're not talking about compressed working. We're not talking about four 10 hour days. What we're talking about is 100% of the pay 80% of the time, but in return for a commitment to delivering 100% of the output. Again, when we talk about output, this is not necessarily about people doing the same work in the same way in four days rather than five, but actually it's about trying to deliver the same results with fewer or more efficient inputs.

(03:14)

And really this is something that Andrew Barnes, our founder, when he introduced this in his own company, perpetual Garden, what he wanted to figure out was if I change the conversation in my company away from the length of time that people are spending at the office, at the desk, or on the clock, and shift that on to output and in return for this much sharper focus on productivity, I offer people the benefit of that extra time back. Can I deliver better business performance? And the results in his company were very, very clear. Productivity, wellbeing and engagement scores all went up. And really our organization was born out of the momentum and the coverage and the attention that that particular trial generated back in 2018. Just very quickly to put this in a historical context, as we all know, just over a century ago now, we had the movement for the five day work week as we know it today for the weekend, for the eight hour day.

(04:06)

And back then a lot of people would've said that that idea, which people like Henry Ford pioneered in the manufacturing industry, labor unions and civil society movements campaigned for eight hours, labor, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest. They would've said that this is an unaffordable luxury, that it's not practical to implement that it's going to crash the economy. But actually what we've seen is that over the past 20 to 30 years, we've seen incredible advances in productivity, incredible advances in technology through globalization, through the advent of the internet and email. But yet we still have the same standard work week as was designed for the second industrial revolution. And the question we need to ask ourselves, is the five day nine to five an appropriate structure for this new digital era? And as we enter into the fourth industrial revolution of digitalization, AI and automation, can we share the benefits of those gains with workers in the form of reduced work time?

(05:04)

So some of the reasons why we advocate for moving to a four day work week include the obvious better work-life balance for workers, improved wellbeing, reduced stress and burnout. Some of the results we've seen from the trials that we're running all over the world suggest very, very positive outcomes in those areas. This is also an opportunity for the four day work week to act as a forcing function within your business to really, really hone in on getting more efficient, becoming more creative, and enhancing engagement with your workforce. There's also some very significant recruitment and retention benefits, which I'll talk to later. And also benefits potentially for wider society in our economy, in the form of improved gender equality, a more sustainable economy and reduced carbon emissions, and also benefits in terms of public health. But some of the main reasons we're seeing the four day work week gaining momentum is that sometimes when you're talking about really deeply embedded cultural and societal norms, it takes a great disruptor to dislodge those.

(06:03)

And that's what the pandemic has done. It's done it at a leadership level where more and more leaders are turning to reduce work time as a vehicle to give them a competitive edge when it comes to recruitment and retention in a really tight labor market. Many firms that can't compete in the top 1% of compensation are now seeing that actually they can compete in the top 1% of work weeks. Managers are much more open-minded to this idea of measuring people based on results and what gets done rather than presenteeism in a post covid work environment. And also for workers, something that felt like a pie in the sky idea a number of years ago now feels like it's something that's deeply attainable. And people's priorities have really changed post covid what people's expectations are when it comes to a quality life work balance has also changed probably forever.

(06:51)

So very quickly, we're running these pilot programs all over the world. This year alone, we have 180 companies with over 10,000 employees in the us, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and the UK participating in these trials. And effectively what this involves is a coordinated six month trial of the four day work week where we offer training, mentoring, access to networking, and also a global research project, which assesses the impact of the four day work week on the company and on its people. And really what we're finding in a huge amount of companies is that in actual fact, the four day work week is already here. It's just buried under the rubble of distractions and interruptions in the workday, poor meeting discipline, outdated pro processes and poor use of technology. And actually when you introduce the four day work week to empower people to come up with the solutions to address these inefficiencies in your business, you find that delivering four day, five days worth of output in four is often well within your grasp.

(07:49)

So in conclusion, we believe that this is an idea whose time has come that's growing in momentum all over the world. It can potentially be a triple dividend policy for a more sustainable economy. It's a method to share the benefits of productivity growth and technological advancement with workers. And really what we're seeing so many companies and employers starting to ask themselves is my greatest risk that I try this and it doesn't work out or is my greatest risk that I ignore the growing momentum for reduced work time and my biggest competitor does it first. So looking forward to the conversation and thanks for your time.

Deanna Cuadra (08:25):

Alright, well I want to then ask, and this is directed to Lauren who has embraced the four day work week, but as good as that sounds, I want to know what were some hesitancies when you decided you want to try to make this transition?

Lauryn Sargent (08:40):

Well, I was the most hesitant of everybody. So I can understand why this sounds like, okay, that could never work at our company. I think for us or for me, I was hesitant because we have we're a client services professional services company, so we serve clients. Are we going to tell them that we're just not going to pick up the phone or help them on a Friday? That seems insane. And we have really high client our net promoter scores a hundred, which is something we're really proud of. Are we going to sacrifice the quality of what we're delivering because we're having to rush it through four days and then it just seems preposterous. We have so much work to do, why would we think that we're going to cut hours and we're still going to be able to be as productive? So that was a lot of probably what you're all thinking too.

(09:30)

It's like that's just not possible. So I think productivity, quality of work we definitely didn't worry about the engagement. So I think that we can, all that seems a little bit obvious where clearly people would like a day to themselves when no one else is working to do live their lives and do their own thing. It just depends on are you the company that's going to empower them to lead the life they want? But again, I'm getting a little <laugh> evangelical because I'm such a convert now to the four day work week. But I would think that those are some of the hesitations that companies would have.

Deanna Cuadra (10:02):

And Joe, I'm curious what companies have told four day week. Well, I mean you're working with companies from across different industries and across the world. What he systems have you often heard from other companies?

Joe O'Connor (10:14):

I think this, for a lot of companies, the concept is very ground up. So the most detail-oriented CEO in the world does not know the day-to-day intricacies of each of their employees jobs well enough to tell them how they need to redesign it. So this is something that we find culturally, this is not going to fix deeply embedded organizational cultural issues that you have. This is something that compliments really strong positive work cultures that are already in place because this is about a culture of trust, it's about a partnership approach between the company and its people. If this is seen just as a benefit that on a particular date we introduce a four day week, now we're a four day week company, then I think it probably doesn't work because this is really about people changing the way they work, changing behaviors, changing work practices.

(11:02)

So in order to sustain that, this needs to be something that people are really empowered in the process. So we find for some companies that maybe explore the idea of a four day work week, the thing that maybe shifts them off course is in the C-suite. They feel they need to come up with every solution to every problem before they engage their staff or before they run their TR trial, which actually is impossible. We would encourage companies, don't overthink it, set the direction at leadership level in terms of these are the metrics, these are the targets, these are the objectives that we need to meet, and then really empower your people to figure out the details after that.

Deanna Cuadra (11:39):

And I want to ask, what were then some of the biggest challenges that Joe you've witnessed but then Lauren, that you've had to personally overcome with your company in order to

Lauryn Sargent (11:52):

Reach that four day work week? I'd say for me it all goes down to really trusting. We've always had a great team. So it's not about that, it's my more outdated thoughts of how people should work or how they're productive. So it's not because anyone was showing me this, but it's more just how I've always felt and the companies I worked in previously is to really trust. So for example, we have a four day work week. It was tough for me at the beginning if people take a morning off on one of those four days. So I'm like, that's what Fridays are for. That's when you go take your dog to the vet is on Fridays. But I actually had to let go of that because that's not in the spirit of what the four day work week is supposed to be. It's not about managing anyone's time, it's for them to manage their own time and knowing that we still are held to the same levels of success and service, but it's not up to me to micromanage anybody.

(12:46)

So I think that was tough where it's like, well, we have Friday, so just cram all your personal stuff in Friday. Some organizations I know that also have four day work have, we do have those guardrails in place and it does work for them. But for us, again, for me it was more of like, I need to let go and trust our other leaders. Were doing that with their teams to much success. So I just need to let that go and just know people are going to manage their time they want, as long as everything is still working well, then like Joe had said, it's set up to me to go in someone's calendar and figure out all the things they have to do that day then. So I'd say that was one thing I had to overcome is just letting go even how the four days go.

Joe O'Connor (13:26):

I think one of the things that we've seen some leaders struggle with is where are the boundaries? Because often the four day work week is seen as a much more rigid concept than it actually is. And what I mean by that is when you work a five day nine to five in most jobs, if a crisis comes up, if a deadline surfaces, if there's a particular challenge that requires immediate attention, then people do sometimes box outside those boundaries. You know, might do an hour and an evening, you might do a bit of work on a Saturday. That doesn't change. This is about moving the needle on the standard expectation. And it's really important to be able to define the difference between Adam Banker, one of the companies that have done this in the uk, their CEO talks about if my regulator looked to meet me on a Saturday when I was working a Monday to Friday, I would have that meeting because that is critically important to my business.

(14:16)

So if my schedule day off is the Friday and he looks for that coffee, I'm going to take that meeting. That is very, very different from a manager sending out non-essential email to their team on a Friday if they know that their team are off and that can actually wait until Monday. So sometimes just getting those kind of cultural balances within the organization, really it's something that you can do all the planning and preparation in the world, but this is to a certain extent for the first couple of months, it's moving to a different country, you know, need to really allow that time for TI bet in and to adjust.

Lauryn Sargent (14:48):

And I think we've underestimated the power of closing the office. So I really love that idea of choice. Maybe if you work a four day work week, someone can choose what day that they work. However, that's great and probably does work in some organizations. For us, we've seen so much goodness come from closing the office on one day, which is Friday. So yes, it does mean that if your client can only meet on Friday, yes, sometimes we're having a meeting or two on Fridays sometimes, but for the most part there's a lot of power in knowing no one else is working, no one else at my workplace is waiting on me. And so there's a lot of real true day off because yes, you may have some things you need to do for your job, but it's not because everyone's having a meeting that you're not attending. So I'd say there's just so much power in the office being closed on that day.

Deanna Cuadra (15:42):

And I have to ask as well especially as a lot of companies are trying to figure out the secret to attracting and retaining their talent, how does the 48 workweek serve as an attraction retention tool and how can companies utilize that?

Lauryn Sargent (16:00):

I'd say for us, we're not huge. So we're not like the case study that's like Microsoft did it even though I know that they have tested it. But for us, were 16, I think with our contract we're something like 25 people, but we've doubled in size the last two years in terms of employee headcounts. So I know that it's still a small amount of people, but we still have had to hire and we're not the most competitive. We're not Microsoft, we're not competitive that we can't attract people with amazing benefits and above average pay. But the four day work week, we've had an abundance of excellent candidates we would not have been able to attract if we did not have that. So that gets people's attention, it gets them to the table. And then also because we are 32 hours for 40 hours we attract people who are really sick of having to just show up so people think they're being productive.

(16:57)

So I'd say the people who would who've come to our organization, were already in that place of, I already do my work very fast and efficiently. There's so much extra I have to do for work to show people that I'm working. And so our culture is attractive to them. So we've been able to attract the right type of person who's already going to thrive in a 32 hour work week for four day work week. So I'd say that the, it's been awesome for recruiting and we've been able to attract talent that we definitely would not have otherwise have we not had a four day work week for sure.

Joe O'Connor (17:29):

I think there's many aspects of this that are not a slam dunk. The productivity question, it depends on the process, it depends on the culture. Absolutely. This one right now is a slam dunk. It might not be in five years time, but in terms of recruitment of retention, if you can pull off the four day work week, this is something that gives you an incredible competitive advantage. Adam Bank, the company I mentioned earlier on have seen an increase of 500% in their applicants for open job vacancies since they moved to a four day week. Health-wise, a company here in the US and not-for-profit in Boise, Idaho. Last June and July had a huge crisis of employee attrition. They introduced the four day work week last August almost as a crisis measure, and their employee turnover has effectively reduced to nothing since then. So this is something that increasingly in sectors like it, tech, professional services, software finance, where this is really taking off as a trend for a lot of companies. Maybe they previously offered different versions of flexible working, they offered remote as a competitive advantage. Now that's no longer a competitive advantage. Now that's a standard industry expectation. So a lot of those companies are turning to the four day work week as the new thing that can give them that edge.

Deanna Cuadra (18:42):

And we've already sort of discussed how work has evolved, especially that's really that evolution's accelerated in the last two years as people have stayed home, as people have learned to have embraced essentially a totally new way of working. And I want to ask both of you, why does the work world need a four day work week now more than ever?

Joe O'Connor (19:10):

I think one of the things I hear a lot of is this idea that we don't need to talk about time, we don't need to talk about four days rather than five because now we have this new world of flexible and remote, but actually while remote working, it has huge social and cultural benefits for individuals. It's demonstrated through the pandemic that you can actually move to a motor hybrid and maintain productivity, but it does not address the questions of overwork and burnout. In many cases, it's exaggerated them. It does not address the questions of inefficiencies within the business. I think lots of people in the room will be familiar that we have more unnecessary meetings now than we maybe did a few years ago. We have more digital distractions and instant messaging overload than we did a few years ago. So actually providing that this needs to be a two-pronged approach, we need to talk about flexibility and location of work, but we also need to talk about time. And that's why I think the four day week conversation is so important,

Lauryn Sargent (20:05):

And at least in our world, I mean, I feel like if you're expecting people to do awesome, great work and be committed to you, you need to offer the same, to have a more beneficial relationship. Because I know just personally <laugh>, I'm not going to have a breakdown stage, but past two years and kids and all these pressures, I mean it's getting to me and definitely to our company. And so people really needed a break. And in we have unlimited pto, that doesn't really help as I do believe in closing. The office actually has to be the thing. So the four day work week, I think, of course it's improved retention, our ability to recruit, but mostly it's improved wellness. We all really have needed that break and people really do need to feel some control over their life. So giving them a day back has allowed them to do that. So I'd say that that's it. Just for our own wellness and mental health, we need a break and it's great to have it a whole day once a week, as long as the things aren't a business owners, as long as the things aren't sacrificed, productivity, that those types of things. And I'm telling you right now for our company, they have not been sacrificed at all. It's been pretty incredible.

Deanna Cuadra (21:15):

I could definitely get into another question here, but I want to make sure I give the audience a chance to ask anything they'd like. Well, we have some time up here, so if there's any questions, please let me know. I'm trying to come up. Oh yes sir.

Audience 1 (21:29):

I'm curious about the cultural differences. You know, put a list of countries off, so the United States versus say Ireland or some of the other countries, curious about the receptivity in the various countries. And then secondly also from generational perspective in terms of decision makers, are you seeing more receptivity in the younger, the decision maker or the CEO or whoever may be in the top of the chain?

Joe O'Connor (22:00):

So on your first question, won't surprise you to learn that, that I'm actually from Ireland, moved to New York in September of last year, and I definitely had a lot of people saying to me, best of luck with that. You're moving to the world's capital of overwork to convince people to move to a four day work week. I mean, we have, we've over 60 companies in the us It's funny, the UK trial that we're running got way more global coverage including here in the US than the US won. But we've had quite a lot of openness, quite a lot of engagement from US employers. I think that what we're seeing is that in places like the US and the UK where there's such a culture of long hours, it's such a badge of honor. Something like a four day work week feels more like a revolutionary exciting shift.

(22:43)

Whereas in someplace like the Netherlands where the standard work week is already 34, 35 hours in many ways, the four day work week mightn't seem like that kind of a great leap. So we've definitely seen it spark a conversation here. It might well be the case that there's a smaller percentage of employers open to it here than might be the case in other parts of the world, but that's still a pretty sizable chunk from our point of view. On the second question, I think there probably is an element of a, I think there's some data and research that suggests executives and managers in younger age groups are more open-minded to the four day work week. And we have seen examples even at an employee level where companies have offered this as an opt-in or an optout where effectively they say, look, we're paying you for the output, we're only requiring you to work four days or 32 hours but if you want to come into the office on the fifth day, that's entirely up to you. We do tend to see it kind of skew older for the people that choose to just continue to work in that traditional pattern because maybe they've been doing it for a long period of time and aren't ready for that adjustment.

Audience 1 (23:51):

Thank you.

Deanna Cuadra (23:54):

All right, any other questions? Is someone, oh, yes sir.

Audience 1 (23:59):

Hi. I'm curious if compatible with let's say like the place to expand.

Joe O'Connor (24:15):

We do. So our plan is that by the second quarter of next year, we want to run a pilot program in every time zone and region each quarter. So that regardless of where in the world you are and when you want to run a trial, we live a program that can accommodate you. We've really taken the approach that we have up to now, partly for capacity reasons and also because announcing or launching a new program in a particular market tends to spark interest conversation momentum. But we have had interest from Singapore, from Thailand, from Cambodia and this is something that we're seeing as very much a global movement. It's not just happening in the Nordic countries in Europe where you might expect it. We've seen the United Arab Emirates move to a four and a half day work week for their entire public sector and parts of the economy move to a four day week. So this is something that isn't just confined to those countries that you might expect might be at the forefront of the conversation.

Audience 1 (25:10):

Thank you.

Deanna Cuadra (25:13):

Yes. Did you have a question? Oh yes.

Audience 2 (25:17):

Can you mention this in manufacturing for healthcare where there's basically a 24-hour clock that has to be met, and how do you implement that? That was my question.

Deanna Cuadra (25:34):

Perfect information.

Lauryn Sargent (25:36):

Yeah. Well, I can only speak to some of our clients that we've supported not in transitioning to a four day work week, but more of just untraditional schedules. So in manufacturing we've seen, we've seen some of our clients adopt actually asking their employee base on the floor. This is for, this is probably 40 million solar panel production. So they asked the people on the floor what's the ideal schedule, and they came up with three twelves. That's something that they give the choice to the employees to form the schedule, and then they pilot it and tried it. And then we were brought in to talk to the employees about how it's working and sharing stories about <laugh>, how that actually is impacted so that they can recruit more people at that schedule. And it worked out well for them. But I know that's not their exact question, but I know that there's some organizations that are not a consulting company, which does lend itself to try it looking at untraditional schedules.

Joe O'Connor (26:37):

So we have got some manufacturing firms, including a motor home manufacturer here in Ohio. In the US we have a children's exhibits manufacturer in the US It is a smaller cohort in healthcare and manufacturing and hospitality, but we have seen success stories and case studies of where this has worked and where it can work in manufacturing. It's very much about process efficiencies on the factory floor. But I think it is important to say, first of all, this is not a one size fits all. So what worked for Lauren's company where it's a universal day off, which might make sense in that environment. For lots of companies, this does require split shifts, schedules and rosters to ensure that you can maintain coverage over five, six, and in some cases even seven days. And the other thing is that just like the five day work week, this isn't going to happen overnight everywhere, all at once.

(27:26)

This is a gradual transition and that there are certainly certain industries that are more ready to make this jump right away. But when you talk about places like healthcare, let me give you one example. A care home in Gothenberg in Sweden did this a number of years ago. They ended up abandoning the trial because even though the staff outcomes were incredibly favorable, unsurprisingly the patient outcomes were incredibly favorable. They talked about that staff were much more engaged, much more time for activities, but the cost went up. They had to hire more care home assistance in order to cover the hours. I think that's when you get into, it's not necessarily 180 hundred, it's having this broader conversation about the cost of overwork and stress and burnout in the healthcare profession, which we know is a global problem. We know it has really negative medical and healthcare outcomes for patients, and it has a cost to the X checker. So the question is, as we move towards a situation where we need to invest in low carbon jobs, we need to invest in jobs that aren't going to be automated anytime soon, then actually there's a pretty strong argument to say we need to invest in job creation within the caring economy. And that's where the idea of a shorter work week starts to become potentially feasible in those sectors.

Deanna Cuadra (28:41):

Alright, I think we, oh yeah. Yes ma'am.

Audience 2 (28:44):

Just to fill off the question about the healthcare and other essential businesses that need people 24 7, do you lose the benefit of all at all, try to schedule it so that they can still service those people, but you don't have the same day off all every week. It's like you're still getting the emails from people and so does that kind of take away,

Joe O'Connor (29:13):

It makes it a little bit trickier, but it doesn't mean that there aren't disciplines that you can introduce internally in order to be able to counteract those things. And we all know there's things you can do with your email, there's things you can do with your slack, there's things you can do with how you run your operations internally. So yes, it's not as straightforward. And we would say in companies like Lawrence, where it's about producing a particular quality of outcome for your clients within a defined timeframe, the universal day off makes sense because it maximizes the collaboration time that your people have and it simplifies the fact that everyone is off at the same time. But if you're in sales, if you're in product, if you're in a call center then it is about figuring out those schedules. And while there's a greater complexity to making those logistics work, it can be done and it is being done by hundreds of companies all over the world.

Deanna Cuadra (30:07):

Alright, well we are just at time here and I want to thank both of our lovely speakers today for sharing their own four-day week journeys with us. And I want to thank everybody for being here today on our last day. I wish you all safe journeys home if you are heading home, and of course a lovely rest of the conference. Thank you.