Hooray! 4-Day Work Week!
Sep 27, 2023
Right now, chances are that your leaders are talking about implementing a 4-day work week by 2024.
They’ve heard all the noise, they like the idea, they want it for you…
But, they're just not sold yet…
Realistically, what are chances your employer will make the switch?
I was intrigued, so I decided to do my own research. As a business owner, I've formed my own thoughts about the 4-day work week.
The Idea
So the idea is that if you work 4 days, (instead of 5), and you still get paid for working 5 days, your productivity increases - to the point that you’ll be delivering the same outcomes in a smaller time frame.
Surely, if everyone reduced their work week to 4 days they would love it, right? Who wouldn’t!?
But, digging a little deeper, I thought…
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Everyone I know already works really hard - they can’t work harder - so how will they fit 5 days work into 4?
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Will everyone work more efficiently?
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What pressure does it put on team leaders if they have employees that take the piss?
Will that fracture relationships?
The Biggest Concern
Money, honestly, is the biggest concern. Let me explain…
So hypothetically, if I had say 100 employees, my cost to pay them would be roughly $10m.
If the 4-day work week didn’t provide me any benefits, I would need to hire more people to fill the gaps.
My loss would be $2.2m.
In order for this to work, I really need to be sure that my costs won’t rise. I don’t want to have to fire people just to maintain a 4-day work week, and I don’t want to go back on my word at a later stage and potentially damage relationships with my team.
But, to my complete surprise…
Admittedly, though I was really sceptical, there were some stats that really made me think.
42% reduction in resignations
Why does this matter? Because every time a great employee leaves, it costs me at least $10k to hire their replacement.
The average tenure of a business is 3.4 years, so for a 100 employee business, roughly 29 people would leave each year. A 42% reduction means I have to hire 12 people each year.
That’s a saving of roughly $1.2m per annum. Ca ching.
36% increase in revenue
Revenue is a proxy for productivity. If you’re more productive you should (technically) be able to earn more. So, to see that 41 businesses increased their revenue by an average of 36% is amazing.
Who knows what they would have earned working 5-days, but it’s complemented nicely with a 57% increase in workers’ current capacity compared to their lifetime best.
No organisation returned to 5 days
A resounding 89% of respondents said they would definitely (or plan to) continue with a 4-day work week, and the remaining 11% were leaning towards continuing their 4-day week. Incredible.
This tells me that the benefits of a 4-day work week vastly outweigh the downsides.
Yay or Nay?
To be honest, as amazing as the stats are, I don’t know if this will work for everyone.
I say that cause the trials don’t include all industries, and I really wonder how some will manage. Labour jobs, Customer Service, Coaching, Sales or Teaching come to mind as industries that will be difficult (if not impossible) to shift.
But the downsides (for the most part) seem mitigated in the short term.
Plus, the additional benefits across the board of:
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improvements to physical, mental, life satisfaction
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increased job satisfaction
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improved work-life balance
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a 68% reduction in burnout
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63% increase in attracting talent
cannot be overlooked.
It’s obvious that in order to make the most of these benefits, a period of coaching, learning and adjustment in work patterns is needed to make it happen.
But done right, it’s a ‘yes’ from me.
Source: https://www.4dayweek.com/