Transcription below:
Alyssa Place: (
Welcome to Perk Up! A podcast about workplace culture and benefits brought to you from the team at employee benefit news. I'm Alyssa Place, executive editor at EBN. And we're back to talk with business leaders who have implemented forward thinking, covetable workplace policies and benefits, keeping their employees happy and their company's bottom line thriving. Last week we heard from editor-in-chief, Stephanie Schomer about the benefits of sleeping on the job. And today we're touching base with associate editor, Deanna Cuadra, about why less may actually be more when it comes to our work hours.
Deanna Cuadra: (
Hi there, I'm Deanna Cuadra, an associate editor at Employee Benefit News. And today I wanna ask you one very serious, if not easy-to-answer question: Are we working too much?
Deanna Cuadra: (
I mean, think about it: It's Sunday night and you just managed to finish some household chores, run some errands, maybe you even managed to see a friend this weekend. And yet you feel a sense of dread as you realize you only have a few hours left before you have to call it a night and start your workweek all over again. I mean, have any of us ever finished the weekend feeling truly ready and energized for the week? Or does it seem increasingly impossible to squeeze chores, errands, socializing and downtime into two tiny days.
It's no secret that everyone, be it employers, employees, managers, HR — you name it — is questioning the way we work. Issues of burnout and work-life balance are weighing on today's workforce like never before. And that's not surprising, considering that the pandemic forced many workers to make an office out of their homes, permanently blurring the line between the personal and the professional.
In a survey of over 1000 workers, 87 reported experiencing burnout, with 44% of employees reporting high or extreme levels, according to HR software company Ceridian. However, work's impact on employees does not end at burnout. The Kaiser Family Foundation discovered that since the start of the pandemic in March of 2020, four in 10 adults have experienced symptoms of anxiety or depressive disorders. In 2019, this data point was only at one in 10 adults.
It looks like something needs to change.
With businesses and more importantly lives at stake, what once seemed like an employee fantasy has quickly emerged as a trend at leading companies around the globe: The elusive four-day workweek. Companies like Kickstarter and Awin as well as countries like Iceland and Spain are questioning whether the typical nine-to-five is an outdated measure of productivity. But while the pandemic pushed the idea for a shorter workweek to the forefront of workplace conversations, it's something Andrew Barnes has been thinking about for a while.
Barnes is the co-founder of 4 Day Week Global, a company dedicated to helping other employers reduce their 40-hour workweek. Since launching in 2019, the New Zealand-based organization and its team of five is on the way to helping an estimated 55 companies in North America and Ireland transition to a reduced workweek. But none of this would've been possible if Barnes, who is also the founder of the New Zealand estate planning company Perpetual Guardian, had not conducted a four-day workweek trial with guardians 230 employees nearly four years ago
Andrew Barnes: (
When I was flying once from New Zealand to the UK, I read an article in The Economist magazine that identified that people, specifically Brits, were only productive for about three hours a day. And I wondered what would happen if I gave my staff a different deal, because I assumed it was happening in my company as well. And the deal was basically, you know, would you do things differently, would you do things better if I actually gave you more time off each week? In return for the same pay, you know, would it be a better idea? And that was the thing that evolved into this concept of 100% pay, 80% time, but provided you get a 100% productivity.
Deanna Cuadra: (
Initially, Barnes asked his staff to choose a day off each week. In other words, a 32-hour workweek for the same pay, given the same output. Funny enough, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates the same three-hour window of productivity for its workers. Meaning yes — about 25 hours of productivity goes wasted each week per employee.
It's been over 80 years since Congress amended the Fair Labor Standards Act, making the 40-hour workweek law. And that once sounded as radical as the idea of a four-day workweek sounds to us now. More than 100 years ago, Ford Motor Company shunned the typical 10 or 16 hour days workers were used to, and set a precedent by implementing the 40-hour workweek — and doubling worker salaries at the same time. Notably, Ford's profits practically doubled in the next two years. More than a century later, Barnes has seen results just as encouraging.
Andrew Barnes: (
What surprised us was actually the impact on the organization and the people in the organization. We were lucky enough to bring academics alongside who did some research, qualitative and quantitative, on the impact on the staff. And what we found was that engagement scores, that enrichment, empowerment, enthusiasm, loyalty, those scores went to up 40%, four-zero percent. Stress levels dropped 15%. More people said they were better able to do their job working four days rather than five. And then we found that the overall productivity in the company went up about 25%. Now, I was just looking for holding the line. What we actually got was something that far exceeded, you know, our wildest expectations. Because this was really a trial about trying to see if we could get some productivity efficiency that exploded into being something entirely different. And then we found that our leadership team liked it, obviously our employees liked it and it became this global movement in a matter of a few years.
Deanna Cuadra: (
While Barnes and his team at 4 Day Week Global are now in the business of helping companies pilot programs to test a shorter workweek, other organization leaders are choosing to make that shift on their own.
Courtney Klein is the co-founder and CEO of maternity clothing company Storq. Founded in 2014, the San Francisco-based startup has a small team of eight employees working to make maternity wear more accessible and more comfortable for mothers of all ages and sizes. As the pandemic forced her team to shift to remote work, Klein started to sense that they needed more of a reprieve from the daily grind. She decided to test a four-day workweek throughout the summer of 2021, taking Fridays off the schedule.
Courtney Klein: (
Yeah, so you know, I think anybody who's been running a business during the past two years of the pandemic, you know there was a lot of stress and there was a lot of transition. And you know, particularly running a retail business, there was a lot of uncertainty. So once we transferred, you know, we transitioned to fully remote, everybody at home, I think we felt like the lines between work and personal life were becoming really blurred. You know, we wanted to give our employees back that sense of personal time and work time. We wanted to make Storq a great place to work. And I think we knew that people were feeling burnt out and we wanted to figure out if there was a way for us to remedy that.
Deanna Cuadra: (
That's Klein, who admits that as good as a four-day workweek sounds on paper, it doesn't come without its challenges — especially at first.
Courtney Klein: (
And so I'd say the first three weeks of the four-day week were chaotic while everyone got their footing. And I think there was probably good two to three weeks where we were trying to figure out how we work together. How do we do our vendor relations? Because we're in retail, we have to communicate with people outside the company. How does marketing work? How do all these departments work both externally and internally once we have this new schedule? You know, we always have this standing Friday meeting. Okay. What does it mean if we move it to Thursday? What does that look like? How does that change the complexion of things? And so I think the first two or so weeks, everybody felt really stressed that they like couldn't finish everything. And I think everybody went a little bit into the mode of, 'Okay, I'm just gonna do the things that are the most urgent.' And it didn't feel like there was enough time to get everything done. But I'd say probably around that third week is when people started to like breathe the sigh of relief and kind of start to enjoy and feel the benefits of the four-day workweek. But the beginning was definitely rough.
Deanna Cuadra: (
Once the growing pains period passed, Klein noticed her employees are better at managing their time, as well as their coworkers time, as they scheduled meetings with more care and learned to collaborate with greater efficiency. But implementing a hard and fast rule about taking Fridays off isn't the only way to bring relief to employees, and Barnes urges all company leaders to think first about what their staff needs and then figure out how to best deliver.
A point Barnes will dive into right after this short break.
Welcome back to Perk up! We were just about to discuss how to adapt the four-day workweek to your company's needs. For Barnes, this means really knowing what kind of flexibility your employees will value most.
Andrew Barnes: (
What is my four-day week is not necessarily your four-day week. And I think the best way to view this is it's a rebalancing of the amount of time that we spend working and the amount of time we spend, you know, in our lives. And so the idea is to get to something closer to a 32-hour workweek. One of the key things about the four-day week is that what you're doing is you're trying to give people the time off that is important to them. If you try and shoehorn everybody into a one-size-fits-all solution, what you find is that doesn't necessarily work. So in our company, when we talk four-day week, what we're actually saying is some people take a day off. Some people take two half days. Some people, you know, especially parents of kids, they will work shorter hours on five days. And that means that they can take the kids to school and they can pick them up at the end of the day.
Deanna Cuadra: (
Ultimately, as Klein found out herself at Storq, it does come down to what employees feel will be valuable to them. Klein most likely plans to move forward with Storq's own interpretation of a four-day workweek in the second quarter of 2022, which will be better suited to a smaller retail business — a point that was echoed by her team in a company-wide survey conducted at the end of the trial.
Courtney Klein: (
And I think the kind of interesting thing that came out of the survey is almost universally, everybody said, 'Yes, I loved the four-day workweek, but I wanna think of Friday as like an optional catch-up day kind of.' So almost nobody said that they wanted to be fully off on Friday, which I thought was interesting. You know, our production team was like, 'Well, we want to still like check emails on Friday and we don't wanna be prevented from doing that or feel like we can't do that.' Or our marketing team was like, 'Well, if you know, I'm working on an influencer campaign and we're getting something ramped up, like, I still wanna use that time on Friday.' So we had a lot of people self-report that, 'Yes, it was the four-day workweek, but I used Friday to like catch up on tasks or if something really crazy was happening, I was working, you know, a couple hours.' And it seemed like everybody appreciated that Friday as, you're probably off, but you can use that time to catch up or put yourself in a good position for the next week.
Deanna Cuadra: (
In other words, Storq may very well establish a version of the 32-hour workweek — one where employees will be able to choose if they wanna take that Friday off, depending on their workload. A fitting conclusion since having that Friday off already proved to be a game-changer for Klein's team.
Courtney Klein: (
So it was kind of fun. You know, we have a weekly recap meeting every week where people talk about, you know, what happened for them both work and personal during the week for us to keep connection as a team, as we're so remote. And I was surprised by how many people, you know, got new hobbies once we implemented this workweek. And then I think, you know, I hoped this would be the case, but we saw a lot of people who were just very happy. Like it seemed like our whole team over the course of the summer, we all, like employee satisfaction was very high. And that felt really good that people, you know, were getting their work done and that three-day weekend was really giving people a chance to recharge and then come back on Monday, like excited to work. Like it seemed like everyone was excited when Monday came around. Like, I saw this thing that like inspired me to do this. Like having that breathing room and that, you know, that like lack of Sunday dread, because you feel like you've had enough space to recharge meant that everybody came in on Monday really excited. And that was really fun to see. And I admittedly felt the same way.
Deanna Cuadra: (
The growing pains and nuances Klein experienced at Storq are not uncommon and are the exact type of considerations Barnes and his team at 4 Day Week Global are hoping to help companies work through in the pursuit of a shorter workweek.
Andrew Barnes: (
We will provide them with mentoring. We'll provide them with some training about how you put in place a four-day week program. And what it means is that those businesses will be able to work together. They will have people that they can bounce the problems off because they will all be doing it together as part of the pilot. There is a bit of safety in numbers when you are implementing something like a four-day week. At the same time, we are bringing research alongside that. So that means that those companies will be able to get more global research, but also research that's specific to their company. Now in terms of where this is, well you know, I've now spoken in 97 countries worldwide. There are pilots being run in Spain, in Iceland, in Ireland, in Scotland, Wales. There are good campaigns, strong campaigns, in for example, in the UK and Germany. There is legislative programs being brought in Japan and India. You will know of course that Congressman Takano has dropped a bill into Congress to have a reduced-hours workweek in the United States.
Deanna Cuadra: (
In the summer of 2021, Representative Mark Takano introduced the 32-Hour Workweek Act, a proposed legislation that wouldn't necessarily mandate a 32-hour workweek for all, but would give employees overtime compensation for working beyond those hours. A quarter of the members of the House of Representatives already declared support for the proposal, meaning the U.S. may eventually, potentially join Iceland, Scotland, Japan, Sweden and the United Arab Emirates in rethinking their workweeks on a nationwide scale.
Andrew Barnes: (
You know, this has rapidly moved beyond this small campaign by a group of activists, if you will, to something that is absolutely in the mainstream. And this is a conversation that you are now seeing being taken up by not just national governments, but also regional governments and cities experimenting and rethinking, 'How do we change the balance?' So I expect that this is something that will become the norm. After all, you know the construct that we are working with is the five-day week, which was delivered to us by Henry Ford about a hundred years ago. And clearly, a system of working structured for repetitive manufacturing in the 1920s is not fit for purpose in the 2020s.
Deanna Cuadra: (
Whether or not the 32-hour workweek does become the norm, it is an added benefit that employers can present to their workforce and potential hires in an effort to attract and retain talent in a competitive labor market — something Klein well aware of.
Courtney Klein: (
Our company, being a small startup, we can't always offer the financial incentives that larger companies can offer. And so for us having, you know, making Storq a great place to work and having sort of more intangible benefits that contribute to happiness are a way for us to recruit. So we're thinking of the four-day workweek, as you know, one of the benefits we can offer if we can't match 401k matching that you may have had at your previous company or the salary that you've had at your previous company. But we have a bunch of other benefits that would motivate you and excite you that this is a great place to work.
Deanna Cuadra: (
Do you have any advice to employers who are thinking of, you know, trying a four-day workweek or contemplating reducing their work hours?
Courtney Klein: (
Yeah, I think we learned very quickly that like someone's hours that they are quote-unquote available, do not equal productivity and that there are a lot of hours in the day or in the week where people may just be, you know, you need a break. And so people might just be, you know, surfing the internet or something like that. And I think compressing, you know, obviously, that's still going to happen and that's still important. But compressing that into that four days, I think is really interesting and great and can work out, you know, really well. But, you know, I think for us, something that really worked was doing the trial period and presenting it as, 'Hey, we're gonna trial this, then we're going to get everybody's feedback at the end and then maybe we'll do this or maybe we won't, but not promising anything.' And then while it was happening, I think we just had a lot of feedback from the team.
Courtney Klein: (
And a lot of check-ins. Like I started, you know, I shifted to having more one-on-one meetings with people. And then in all of those one-on-ones, I'd say, 'How's this four-day workweek working for you? Like, what do you feel like you didn't get to this week? How can I support you as we undergo this transition in order to kind of speed up that time it takes?' You know, there will be, like I said, that like initial panic. But kind of pushing past that, what we found was something really great on the other side.
Deanna Cuadra: (
For Barnes, this journey starts with doing a bit of reflection, research and preliminary planning.
Andrew Barnes: (
Have a look, have a read of what's out there and then ask yourself, you know, in your companies, 'Is the way you're working today the pinnacle of achievement in your business, or is there indeed a better way?' And I'm confident that actually a lot of people turn around at the end of that and say, 'You know, there is a better way.' And if we engage with our staff and we give them the challenge, how would you do things differently? They will surprise you.
Deanna Cuadra: (
So do you think your organization is ready for a 32-hour workweek? Are you willing to put your team to the test and find the best way to work? Leaders, listen to your employees and employees talk to your leaders — it may be time to find out.
Thanks so much for joining me today. I'm Deanna Cuadra with Employee Benefit News.
Alyssa Place: (
Thanks for joining us. That's our show today. Stay tuned for next week's episode of Perk Up! where we'll hear about new and innovative ways to support working moms.
This episode was produced by Employee Benefit News with audio production by Kellie Malone. Special thanks this week to Andrew Barnes at 4 Day Week Global and Courtney Klein from Storq. Rate us and review us wherever you get your podcasts and check out more content from the EBN team at www.benefitnews.com.