When it comes to work, can less lead to more? This company decided to put that idea to the test.
Athletic and corporate performance coaching company Exos launched an internal study on whether a
"Even prior to the pandemic, a lot of us fell into the trap of making more hours available to work, especially those working from home," says Patrick Youreneff, vice president of compensation, benefits, HRIS and payroll at Exos. "As a result, we saw team members feeling more stressed and less productive, and we realized we want to figure out a better way to work."
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After implementing the policies and cutting down the week to four days, the positive results were clear: The company saw a 24% increase in employee productivity, and its sales pipeline grew by 211% in just six months. Meanwhile, the company burnout rate fell from 70% to 36%, putting Exos on the right track for reducing turnover.
Youreneff underlines that while a reduced workweek is at the heart of the solution, it wasn't as simple as giving employees a three-day weekend. Notably, Exos has what they call "You Do You" Fridays, which can be used for rest or work catch-up if an employee is worried about having a hectic Monday. Youreneff admits that he prefers using Friday to get some work out of the way, while other employees may find they're more productive the following week if they just take more time for their personal lives on a designated day each week.
EBN spoke to Yourenoff to further understand how they forged a new way of working that works for everyone.
How did you organize the four-day workweek to optimize employee performance?
We tossed some ideas around, but we knew that unless we had a solid document to refer back to, what we were trying to accomplish probably wouldn't work. So that was the origin of our Readiness Culture Code, and putting together an actual playbook that we could distribute to our teams across the organization. That was our guiding tool, and it included things like 'You Do You' Fridays, how to be intentional about scheduling, optimizing your time working and giving yourself microbreaks throughout the day.
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What really helped was designating Mondays and Wednesdays as days you would limit internal meetings and calls at Exos — those days are essentially designed for you to get your own work done and then work collaboratively on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Once team members adjusted their schedules, that helped us unlock how to be more efficient and meet deadlines in a truncated work week.
Why do you think your four-day experiment was ultimately so successful?
We took a top-down approach: We started with our C-level team figuring out how we were going to make this work across an organization that stretches across the U.S. and globally. We wanted a new way of working and wanted to make everyone feel the positive impact. That's why we relied on flexibility. We knew it wasn't going to be a one-size-fits-all approach, and we were very clear about that from the beginning.
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I'm a little bit of a traditionalist, and I'm very routine-driven. I had some hurdles to get over in thinking about what Friday would mean for me and how I was going to achieve my work. But for me personally, it was huge realizing that Fridays were going to be probably my most productive day of the week, just because I could go through my emails, connect with vendors and complete internal work that's on my project list. It's unlocked so much for me in the way of productivity. And then, if you think about how that carries over into the following week, it feels like I'm no longer playing catch-up on Monday.
How did Exos' approach to athletic performance inspire your four-day workweek?
With technology, we can find ourselves working longer hours at a harder pace than what we've evolved to handle as a human species — and the result of that is burnout. When you think about our professional athletes, they experience the same burnout, but on a physical level. We know peak physical performance comes with periods of high-intensity intervals, followed by recovery periods. It ebbs and flows almost like a sine graph. We figured the same principle could be applied to how we work as humans. And at the end of the day, what we found in the study is that burnout is down, team members are feeling more productive and turnover has reduced drastically.
