Episode 36 · 25 April 2023 · 1:19:52
4-Day Work Week 101: A Crash Course for Business Owners and Leaders
4-Day Work Week 101: A Crash Course for Business Owners and Leaders
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Why the 4-day work week matters right now
Meet Joe O'Connor — the expert behind the global pilot
Meet Banks Benitez — CEO who made the leap
Meet Fery Kaszoni — the entrepreneur's perspective
What kicked off the 4-day work revolution?
The operational first step: streamlining and prioritising
Why "4-day work week" might be the wrong name
The biggest pushback: "It won't work for my business"
The employer brand and retention dividend
The surprising wellbeing and sleep benefits
Measuring productivity — and why you're being watched
When it doesn't work: pilots, reversals and lessons learned
The misconception about "working less"
AI, AutoGPT and the future of productivity
"Some people will take advantage" — and why that's okay
If you're convinced: where to start
Top takeaways and final thoughts
Show notes
The 4-Day Work Week 101: A Crash Course for Business Owners and Leaders
Hosts: Al Elliott and Leanne Elliott (Chartered Occupational Psychologist)
Is the 4-day work week about working hard or hardly working? Is it a passing fad or the future of work? Can it improve well-being, or is it a flawed solution for more complex workplace challenges? And perhaps most importantly — how can businesses actually afford it?!
Al and Leanne answer these questions and more in this crash course episode, joined by three expert voices:
- Joe O'Connor — Director & Co-Founder at Work Time Reduction Centre of Excellence, and former CEO at 4 Day Week Global, the organisation behind the hugely successful global pilot. Joe supported over 200 employers and 10,000 employees through the transition to reduced-hour, productivity-focused working in 2022.
- Banks Benitez — CEO of Uncharted, who led the company through a rebrand, strategic pivot, and partnerships with brands like Chipotle, Facebook, and NBC that doubled the size of the organisation. In 2020, he moved Uncharted to a 4-day workweek — and they were named by Outside Magazine one of the 50 best places to work in the US.
- Fery Kaszoni — Founder & Managing Director of Search Intelligence Ltd, a leading digital PR agency. In May 2020, Fery transitioned his business and 40+ employees to a 4-day work week, with the announcement on LinkedIn garnering more than 120,000 reactions in just three days.
Whether you're a believer or a sceptic, this episode is a must-listen for anyone wanting to understand the dos, don'ts and hows of transitioning to a 4-day work week — without getting caught up in the latest workplace fad.
Top 3 Takeaways
It's about working better, not working less. The 4-day work week is really a productivity conversation. The teams that succeed are the ones that streamline operations, cut unnecessary meetings, and protect deep focus time — not the ones that just squeeze 5 days into 4.
Start with a diagnostic, not a decision. Before you commit, understand how your business actually makes money, where the time goes, and what "productivity" really means for your teams. A pilot with clear metrics beats a leap of faith every time.
Trust is the foundation — and the objection is the tell. "Some people will take advantage" says more about the leader than the team. Build the systems and the culture first, and the fear usually dissolves.
More From Truth, Lies & Work
Connect with our guests:
Join the conversation on LinkedIn: Truth, Lies & Work
Listen back for more on:
- Recovering from and preventing burnout
- The Founder Story of Co-Host Al Elliott
- How to Lead Gen-Z and Millennials, with Sophie Wade
Connect with Al and Leanne:
Connect With Us
Get in touch, book a call, or find Al and Leanne on LinkedIn — all in one place: truthliesandwork.com/connect
Mental health support: findahelpline.com — UK: Samaritans 116 123 · Mind 0300 123 3393 — US: 988 — Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14
Truth, Lies & Work is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network.
Full transcript
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Al ElliottThe dirty little secret is that most businesses think they know their customers. They have the data, the records, the history, but it's scattered across 3 teams and 4 systems. And in our case, it's about 216,000 spreadsheets, which means nobody can actually use it.
Leanne ElliottWhat you should be doing is using HubSpot, because why? HubSpot connects it all— every interaction, every support ticket, every conversation— into one platform. Every team can work from. So when sales talks to a customer, marketing already knows the full story. And when you know more, you grow more.
Al ElliottNice. Check out hubspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses. Is that I haven't yet discovered a business that's moved to a shorter work week that hasn't seen a very significant benefit when it comes to talent attraction and retention.
Leanne ElliottHello and welcome to the Truth, Lies and Workplace Culture podcast, brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. My name is Leanne, I'm a business psychologist.
Al ElliottAnd my name is Al, I'm a business owner.
Leanne ElliottAnd we are here to help you simplify the science of people and create amazing workplace cultures.
Al ElliottYes, we are. So we've got a great episode coming up for you in a second. Um, just a quick reminder with the water cooler, if you're listening to this and it is before for the 24th or the 25th of April.
Leanne ElliottOr even the 25th and 26th of April.
Al ElliottIs that— are those the right dates? Technically, it still works because—
Leanne ElliottNo, it would absolutely still work. Yeah.
Al ElliottYeah. But the Watercolour is the 25th and 26th of April, Tuesday and Wednesday. It's in London, Excel 2003, just 2003, 2023, just in case you're listening to this in the future. And yeah, come down and see us because we are the official podcast partners. So we are going to be prancing around in very important, with We're gonna look like one of those cool YouTube things, like Daniel Mac going, hey, what do you— how'd you get a car like that? What do you do for a living? You haven't seen that.
Leanne ElliottI have. I like that. I do. I do like that. I like how some people just tell them to fuck off and others are like, oh, hey, man, I'm this and that.
Al ElliottI like the ones where they go, I cannot talk to you about that. And I'm like, oh, I see.
Leanne ElliottI see. Yes. We should also mention, if you don't know what the water cooler is, it is like the, the, the biggest, best event for anything to do with workplace culture and wellbeing in the UK. Um, so yeah, 2 days of lots of conferences and not lots of conferences, it's one conference with lots of talks, uh, workshops, a whole exhibition. Um, yeah, it's gonna, it's gonna be cool. So if you can make it, um, come on down. If you can't, don't worry, uh, because we will be bringing you an entire episode dedicated to everything we get up to at the Water Cooler.
Al ElliottAdditionally, if you are not following us on LinkedIn, then go and search for Truth, Lies and Work on LinkedIn and you'll find our page. Um, that's where we kind of comment on what We post our posts, post our posts, we post our episodes, and we also comment about what goes on. And we can just connect with people there. And we connected with 2 guests the other day, which was quite cool. Also just want to give a shout out to 3 people who have recently commented. So if you have recently commented, then I could be saying your name. Angie Redmond, Sharon Summerfield, and Beverly— I'm gonna say Loggia. Loggia?
Leanne ElliottI would have said Loggia. But maybe it is Loggia.
Al ElliottMaybe you could, maybe you could write to us, Beverly, and tell us how you actually sell— how you actually say your name. But those 3, those 3 lovely women were commenting on our, very positively, on our post. And I, the reason I picked them out was because they said they were going to go and listen. So if you are—
Leanne ElliottOh, that's lovely. And Shaz, Bev, welcome. Sounds like a really great '80s band.
Al ElliottIt does, doesn't it? Yeah.
Leanne ElliottAnd Shaz and Bev.
Al ElliottAnd I tell you what, if you don't, then Get in touch with us and tell us you've heard this, then we know you won't have listened like you said you were going to do, and we'll call you out in a week's time and say, yeah.
Leanne ElliottThat's a little harsh. Maybe give them a couple of weeks.
Al ElliottFair enough. We won't do that. And anyway, they won't know because they've not listened.
Leanne ElliottSo that's true. True, true.
Al ElliottOkay, so we are part of our regular, um, regular scheduling. I don't know whether I want to say that. Regular scheduling is that we have a little place called News Roundup where Leanne— we sit back and Leanne tells us 3 or 4 stories that's happening around about the world of people and psychology and workplace culture. So cue the jingle. Okay, so what have you got first, Leanne?
Leanne ElliottWell, normally I would start with kind of a new word alert. Um, I haven't come across one this week, and I thought it's just starting to feel a bit forced. You know, if we have a new word, we'll talk about the new word. If we don't, we won't. Um, so I was thinking to myself, what else could we do as a fun little part of the section? Um, so I came up with truth or lie.
Al ElliottNice.
Leanne ElliottBang on brand. Thank you. Um, so my thought was you can maybe give me a question about something you've heard related to the workplace or workplace culture, the psychology of it all, um, and ask me, is, is this true or is this a lie?
Al ElliottWell, I'll tell you what I have always wanted to ask is that based on, um, an episode with Stella Perks, uh, Stella Perks, Stella Smith from Perks, a couple of weeks ago.
Leanne ElliottOh, that's, that's totally gonna be her name though, isn't it?
Al ElliottStella Perks.
Leanne ElliottStella Perks.
Al ElliottStella Perks. Um, so based on that conversation at the beginning of that episode, you said that Healthy, normal people, healthy people should go not have, have 90 minutes without their phone and then not have a coffee for the first hour or something. It was something like that. Should I do all this bit again?
Leanne ElliottNo, I think what I actually suggested, it wasn't that it was healthy. There was a suggestion that a low dopamine morning can contribute to our wellbeing throughout the day. And as part of that suggestion is not to have caffeine within the first 90 minutes of being awake.
Al ElliottRight. Okay. So that's the bit I really wanted to ask you about. So I can't imagine not having a coffee within the first 30 minutes of waking up. I don't know. But is it like, is this a psychological, what's the word when you, when there's a something effect where placebo, placebo is a placebo that I, I believe coffee wakes me up and I believe therefore that if I'm flagging, I'll have a cup of coffee and it will wake me up. Or will it actually do that?
Leanne ElliottYeah, good question. Um, so coffee, caffeine, it stimulates our central nervous system. It's absorbed, uh, pretty quickly, um, into our body, into our brain. Um, and yeah, caffeine as a chemical actually blocks, um, kind of our sleep-promoting receptors in our brain, which is why we feel more awake and alert. So yeah, it's true. Um, but there are actually a few more work-related benefits to caffeine.
Al ElliottMm-hmm.
Leanne ElliottSo there is, um, because I guess my, my thought, you know, when people go things like, I actually can't function before I have a cup of coffee. Like, is it that you can't function, or is it, you say, that habit, that placebo? Well, there's been lots of, lots of different studies into this to see what the impact of caffeine has. And yeah, really interesting results. So one study found that caffeine led to what they called a striking improvement on memory tests taken early in the morning, which is typically a low point of memory. We also know that caffeine can help with visual processing. So a team of researchers found that people improved in their ability to detect moving targets, which was quite interesting. That could be from, you know, somebody, a pedestrian stepping in front of the road, to a football coming to your head. So yeah, there are some interesting cognitive benefits of caffeine, but you might want to be careful if you have a creative role. Um, so other studies have shown that while it does improve a range of cognitive abilities, creativity is not one of them. Um, so for example, some researchers did, um, a test with some participants asking them to use divergent thinking, um, gave one group caffeine, one group none, found no difference. Uh, also some controversial research in the US, um, that physical heat can affect our perceptions of social warmth. So by giving our boss or colleague a hot cup of coffee, uh, they might think better of us. And connect better with us. If you're trying to get something out of your boss, might be a tactic. Um, I say controversial though, because those findings were found once and have never since been replicated. Um, so be careful. Um, yeah. And another interesting one, if you're in a buying role or perhaps looking to reduce costs, um, maybe don't indulge in that second cup of coffee. Um, some researchers found that, um, people who drank just one cup of coffee before they went shopping spent 50% more than those that had decaf coffee or water. Um, and apparently the, the caffeine drinkers reported to being more excited. Um, and when we're more excited, we're more impulsive. So does caffeine make us more awake and alert? Yes, this is true. Does it help us function, particularly in work? Classic answer: it depends. It depends on your role, and it depends on the task that you're doing.
Al ElliottYou bloody psychologists, why I oughta. So, but But on the flip side, if you are going to be selling something to someone, go and get them a shot of espresso.
Leanne ElliottAbso-freaking-lutely. Yeah, you got a sales meeting, give all of your clients espresso.
Al ElliottOkay, what else you got, Leanne?
Leanne ElliottUm, so another story that popped into my, into my newsfeed this week that I thought was interesting. A few episodes ago, we did our women's health episode. We talked a lot about gender gaps in terms of pay, in terms of health, in terms of safety. Do you remember the crash test dummies that we talked about. Um, so we've had similar stories from the health sector during the pandemic about face masks not being— not fitting female health workers. This week, another example has been published in relation to protective bodywear of the UK police. So April 2023 is the first month in our very long history of having women in our police force where police armor has been designed to be lighter and more flexible to the female body. So, until now, they have— our female officers have been putting up with unisex armour, which has been reported to be uncomfortable, inflexible, or even painful. And I think this is mainly around the curves of the body and the bosom area, lots of pushing down. And, you know, ladies, we know that that is not a comfortable position. I'm literally holding my breath as I'm explaining this. TMI. So, um, so yeah, so they've redesigned it, which is, which is kind of cool. There's an amazing, amazing woman called Belinda Goodwin who is the wellbeing lead for the Police Federation, who's really been the driving force in this project. Um, and yeah, she said, you know, it's a game changer. It's not much more comfortable, um, and you feel more protected. It means that, that, um, officers will continue to wear their armour. Um, so they will, they will be protected. I think that's the danger, isn't it? If something's uncomfortable, we tend to take it off.
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottAnd then we're not protected. So, um, so yeah, excellent, excellent, if, if overdue move from the UK police there.
Al ElliottI just hope that they're still able to hook their thumbs into the corners of their, uh, of their protective vests as they look at you, because I see that in all the police chase books. Whenever they stop, they always hook their thumbs at the top. I'm doing it now myself.
Leanne ElliottYou are?
Al ElliottAnyway, so that's a very strange little thing to add to that. An amazing piece of news, and I talk about hooking your thumbs into your, into your armour. Carry on, Leanne. What have you got, number 3?
Leanne ElliottMy number 3. So we are talking about the 4-day work week this week. Everything you need to know about what to do. Is it possible? What impact does it have? Um, and one of the impacts that I came across, um, which I thought was interesting, taking away slightly from the workplace, was the impact of the 4-day work week on climate change. So yeah, there's a growing interest in the 4-day work week because of the impact it could have on employee productivity and wellbeing. But also there is a lot of interest in the impact it could have on climate change. So as you're probably aware, there has been a global pilot at the moment testing the 4-day work week. And as part of that, researchers have been tracking carbon emissions reductions. What they actually found was that the benefits of a 4-day work week Um, in terms of climate was actually the fall in commuting. Um, so the UK data showed that there was a 10% decrease over the entire pilot period of the 4-day work week, so from 3.5 hours, um, to 3.15 hours. Um, and that was actually even bigger in the US. Um, so they're kind of estimating it could reach 15 to 20%, um, reduction in commuting time, which of course is a massive drop What they also found quite interesting is that those people who save time not commuting engaged in low-carbon activities such as walking or stay-at-home hobbies, or had more time to invest in pro-environmental behaviours like volunteering, recycling, buying eco-friendly products. So it's really interesting from both an emissions perspective and behaviour perspective.
Al ElliottYeah, absolutely.
Leanne Elliottperspective, the 4-day work week could have a really big impact on protecting our planet.
Al ElliottWho knew? Well, I'm pretty sure that our guests knew because they're clever people. Talking of which, so we're going to introduce our guests now. So first of all, just the background of this. There's been lots of talk around the 4-day work week recently. I'm sure you've seen it in the news. There's a few big companies who started doing it, including Basecamp, formerly 37signals. Panasonic have started doing it, and I think they might be Latvian, a called Bolt, which recently, if I remember, they bought Mitsubishi Motors or something. It was a, it was a very odd piece of news I saw there. But congratulations to those guys. But we really wanna just get to the bottom of this. Like, so if you see any kind of post on LinkedIn about a 4-day work week, you're gonna see that usually they've got hundreds of comments and almost 50% of people saying this is brilliant, 50% of people saying it's never gonna work.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottSo we really want to ask here, what is the truth here? Where are the lies? Can companies really switch without losing money?
Leanne ElliottYeah, so we are asking all the questions that business leaders would want to know. First, can you really achieve the same in 4 days without adding huge pressure on employees? Number 2, can any business implement it? What about if you charge by the hour? Number 3, is this just another Gen Z thing? Um, and number 4, do clients approve? What are our customers gonna think? think about a 4-day work week.
Al ElliottSo we thought, let's just find the truth behind all of this. Let's go to the horse's mouth. So who are we talking to today?
Leanne ElliottWe are joined today by Joe O'Connor. He was the CEO of 4 Day Week Global, which in collaboration with research group Autonomy and researchers at Boston College and the University of Cambridge undertook this global pilot on the 4-day work week, the results of which came out in February of this year. So, nearly 3,000 employees took part in the pilot from across 31 companies. And there was really basically one, one general rule. We're not just giving people one day a week back, we're reducing their working days to 4 days a week whilst paying them 100% of their pay. So, at the end of this experiment, employees reported so many benefits. It really was a runaway success, and I think much more successful than the researchers initially anticipated. We saw benefits in terms of sleep, stress levels, personal lives, mental health. And according to results published in February, companies' revenue stayed broadly the same during the 6-month trial, but actually rose 35% on average when compared with a similar period from previous years. Why? Because resignations declined.
Al ElliottWow.
Leanne ElliottYeah, it really is amazing. Well, I'll actually leave a link to the full report because I could go through so many statistics in terms of kind of all the benefits that came through by going down to this kind of 32-hour model for the same pay and benefits. Yeah, there are increases in productivity, reductions in stress. There are so many. It really is a compelling piece of research. So, we have Jo with us today to talk us through some of those findings, some of the process, and how he helps organisations adjust to a 4-day work week. Uh, but of course, we can't just take the researcher's word for it. We also have to bring in 2 business owners who have done it themselves.
Al ElliottSo of our 3 guests today, we've got one person who is an expert. That's Joe. You'll meet him in a second. Then we've got the second person who's actually done it and then is now helping other companies transition across to a 4-day work week, and that is Banks. And then finally, we've got Ferry, who's actually just done it, and he's done it quite recently, last year, and he's Oh, wow, you should have seen the LinkedIn post that he put about it. That was, I think it said something like 5 million impressions he got on that.
Leanne ElliottOof.
Al ElliottI know. So it's a hot topic. So let's go meet our first guest. Joe O'Connor is the co-founder of the Work Time Reduction Center of Excellence. If you Google the 4-Day Work Week, I guarantee most of the results on page 1 will feature Joe. He tends to work with larger organizations to transition to the 4-Day Work Week and is currently working with about 150 70 leaders to implement these trials. So let's go meet Joe and find out why he's so passionate about this. I am originally from Ireland, and I first got interested in the 4-day week and shorter working weeks more generally all the way back in 2018, back when really the 4-day week, if we're being honest, was more of a philosophical discussion than a practical one. I was reading some research on trials that had been taking place in Ireland and Denmark and in New Zealand. And really got interested in this initially based on some research we had done in Ireland of public sector workers, which suggested there was a huge amount of working parents that had moved to shorter work weeks or to reduced hour schedules for less pay. But often their experience was that their responsibilities in the job, their expectations, and the output that they were producing was actually the same as it was when they were working 5 days. So this really inspired me to, to get involved with this more. And I designed and developed the first ever pilot project of the 4-day week in my home country in Ireland in early 2021, and then later as CEO of 4 Day Week.
Leanne ElliottOur next guest is Banks Benitez. Excellent name. Banks runs Smart Work Week, which helps leaders of small organizations successfully transition to a 4-day work week. He did this himself with his previous company, Uncharted, and that later got acquired. So we asked Banks why he's doubled down on the 4-day workweek.
Al ElliottYeah, so I was leading Uncharted, an entrepreneurial incubator accelerator based in the United States, for the last 5 or 6 years. In early 2020, we decided to consider piloting a 4-day workweek. We launched a pilot in 2020 over the summer, June, July, and August, hired a third-party evaluator, to measure the results of that pilot. The results came back and were sort of unambiguously statistically positive. So we decided to keep it and we rolled out the 4-Day Work Week over the last 3 years. And our final guest is Feri Cazzoni. Feri grew up in Romania. And when he came to the UK, he founded a company called Search Intelligence, which is a digital PR link building agency. It's quite niche, but it's really interesting to have a look at his website and see what he does. Now, last year, he transitioned to the 4-Day Work Week, and he's seen some really quite incredible results. And what's interesting about Ferry is because he has grown up in a different country and come to the UK, he's got quite a different way of looking at the world. And reasons why he wanted to move to the 4-Day Work Week were perhaps a little different to, to others. So let's go meet Ferry and hear his story. I run a company called Search Intelligence. We have 57 team members now. And we have built this company from 2 employees in 2020 to 57 employees now in like 2 years and something. Because we have set up this crazy PR service that we help other SEO agencies and other SEO companies and departments of SEO and like SEO departments of companies. So I was, as a child, I grew up as a, and even as a teenager, as a very poor person who had, you know, in theory had no chances of doing anything in life. We had no food to eat when I was a child and I was like completely at the bottom of the society, right? Grew up without a father and we didn't have food to eat. And I think the fact that I was like that kind of pushes me to just never wanting to be back at that place again, or nobody in my family ever being there. Therefore, I committed to excellence and And just doing, you know, going all in with everything I do. So I want to be, you know, um, the entity that builds, you know, that builds, um, something great. And I'm just aiming for greatness every day.
Leanne ElliottSo over the next hour, we are going to hear more from Joe Banks and Ferry and hopefully answer all your questions about the 4-day work week. So let's start with the biggest and most obvious question: why even consider a 4-day work week? Here's Joe.
Al ElliottFor the most part, and for the overwhelming majority of participants, employees that took part in these trials were happier and they were healthier. Employers that took part in the trials found that they were better positioned to attract and to retain talent. But also the companies that took part found that they were actually more productive and more efficient. And that's the piece that often for people almost seems counterintuitive. How can you reduce the length of time that people are spending at work, but actually produce better business outcomes. And really what's fundamentally at the heart of that is that when we talk about the 4-day week, we're not just talking about reducing the number of hours that people spend at work. We're also talking about fundamentally changing the way that people work. I think if you look really hard at the businesses that took part in these trials and how they were able to make this a success, it was about using the 4-day week as a forcing function to streamline their operations, to make their processes more efficient, and to change their work practices in a way that enables them to deliver better outcomes. Now, I was curious about why Joe was quite so passionate about this, because you can see that over the last 5 years, he's done so much to kind of be— he's the main proponent, if you Google anything, as I said, about the 4-Day Workweek. So I kind of said, how did you get into this? What was your, what was your motivation for really telling the world about a 4-Day Workweek? I think that survey that I mentioned back in Ireland where, you know, this idea that Parkinson's Law, a task will expand to fill the time that's available for its completion, I think is something that fundamentally is true in most modern organizations. And I think that that played out in the sense that, you know, some of the most— I think lots of people listening to this podcast probably could point to someone in their organization where that holds true. And often it's working parents and often it's women where, you know, they've moved to reduced-hour work weeks. They're efficient, they're productive, they get their work done in the same way as they would do if they were there 5 days. But right now they're not compensated for that. I think that has a huge impact on gender equality in the workplace and actually is a huge driver of the gender pay gap. So when we talk about the shorter work week, I think that this is potentially transformative for businesses. It can give, you know, forward-thinking leaders and companies a real, you know, head start on the competition. It can be so transformative and life-changing for individuals in a whole host of different ways— more time with kids, family, caring for elderly relatives, learning new skills, hobbies, pursuits, and endeavors.
Leanne ElliottFerri's reason for moving to a 4-day workweek is slightly different.
Al ElliottI think different. I think, you know, I think completely different. And than somebody who just all the time, you know, worked in an office and they've never had any other, you know, adventure outside the office. I think I've got this like wheeler dealer, you know, mentality, you know, where, you know, you have to think creatively, you have to, you know, think outside the box. And I'm using that, you know, knowledge from, you know, painting cars for 16 years to now running this agency and, you know, hopefully disrupting the some of the markets that we kind of try to penetrate. And I think with Ferry, you can just see the entrepreneur in him, just wants to do things differently. He looks at, he looks at things and goes, why, why is it not like this? Can we make it like this? And it's, I think that, you know, those classic early adopter sort of mentality of someone who is excited about new things. Therefore, he starts his agency, therefore he starts a new life in a different country. He's excited about new things. And therefore he looked at this and went, yeah, Why not? Let's give it a go.
Leanne ElliottYeah. And I think as well, it's, it's amazing that there aren't more entrepreneurs jumping onto this, especially when we think about kind of where the 40-hour workweek comes from, this 5-day workweek comes from. You know, it's from— it was set in the, you know, after the Industrial Revolution when factory workers didn't have any limits to their hours. Um, so yeah, it was labor union rights in America that fought to instill the 40-hour workweek, and that came into place in Wow. Yeah, the world has changed. So we need people like Ferry who are going to go, uh, guys, are we a bit behind on this?
Al ElliottAbsolutely. So I asked Banks, you know, what, what has kicked off this 4-day work revolution? Because it's something which we've only started— well, I've only started seeing about in the last sort of 18 months. You as a psychologist might have seen studies on it earlier than that.
Leanne ElliottI'm not really— I, I read about it, I heard about it as an idea, Back in, I think it was 2018, 2019. And I knew that this pilot was happening, but the results for this pilot only came out in February of this year. So it's still all very new.
Al ElliottSo I was looking here, Banks was quite an early adopter with this. As the CEO, it was something that I had just been looking into. The team did not come to me with it. And at the time, there was just very little press, to be honest, back in 2019 about the 4-day workweek. There were a couple of examples and case studies, but it was not— it was under the radar as an idea. We'd always been sort of a high-trust organization, a very flexible organization for our employees. And our team decided, yeah, let's, let's give— our executive team decided, yes, let's give it a shot. And then of course, COVID happened. I think our rest of our team was surprised that we were rolling out a 4-day workweek when we decided to, and then they got bought into it. And we spent a lot of time as a collective larger team exploring ways to optimize our workweek. It really was a team effort to make it happen.
Leanne ElliottI know there are so many people that are probably sick of hearing about the pandemic. But it really was such a force in terms of accelerating all of these trends that were kind of— or not even trends, I guess, ideas— and they're accelerating them into, into more of a trend. I think as well, just, you know, that, that whole fragility of life and, and how we want to reimagine work, it's, um, it makes sense to me that this is, you know, the pandemic has really turbocharged this, as Jo explained.
Al ElliottI think the pandemic really turbocharged the shorter work week movement. Leaders were more interested because of, you know, the Great Resignation and the impact on the labor market. Managers were more open to this for the reasons that I just described. And then employees, I think, have demanded this much more because their experience during the pandemic really caused a lot of people to realign their priorities. And it caused a lot of people to kind of realign what is a reasonable balance between life and work. We already had the productive capacity and the technological tools at our disposal to work shorter and to work smarter. But it took something like the pandemic to really dislodge the, the very deeply embedded cultural and societal norms we have around the work week, which is understandable because it's been around now for more than a century. So like the second part of all of this is, is if you are gonna be spending 20% less time at work, it means you've got obviously got 20% less time to do the work. So what do you do? Do you just not do some of it? How do you free up this time? Well, the majority of research shows that if you eliminate low-value activities, then this can work. And Joe totally agrees with this. Was in, you know, improving processes, eliminating low-value activities, or at least minimizing low-value activities, and making better, more mindful use of technology. So this is some of the things that we saw organizations really attack in order to be able to, you know, so What we're talking about here is not about doing the same work in the same way, because often that's a fear of employees. You know, if we're expected to deliver the same results in less time, then surely, you know, will it mean that our work is harder, it's faster, it's more intense? But when you look at the research, actually, it found that these organizations were able to achieve this not through organizational speedup, but through organizational redesign, which effectively meant they were delivering the same output. But with fewer or more efficient inputs.
Leanne ElliottBanks agrees with this and also mentions that it all comes down to prioritizing.
Al ElliottOne, in my experience, is that the teams that are best able to move to a 4-day work week are ones that are getting better at the muscle, like sort of truly a muscle of prioritizing and deprioritizing. So it's not about necessarily getting faster and more productive. It's about really getting clearer about what's a priority for your company and what's not. I think all of us agree that not all hours in the work week are created equal. Some are less of a productive use of time. Some of them are just not essential whatsoever. Maybe we're in meetings that we think are a waste of time. That could mean canceling standing meetings. It could be recognizing that a project is actually not worth continuing. And the 4-Day Workweek for me personally was, was really helpful because it helped me ask this question of what's truly essential, what really drives the key business outcomes that we're after. And then are there things that we can deprioritize? The teams that really thrive and succeed are actually reframing what's important and what's not. And that allows them to actually cut out things that were currently in their work week.
Leanne ElliottI think that the first step is absolutely around operations, isn't it? And streamlining things and making things easier and less sticky. And I think, you know, it was Joe that said that it kind of puts the pressure on organizations to actually prioritize the streamlining of operations and making things more efficient. And, and, you know, as Bank says there as well, you know, not all hours in the working week are made Equal. And I think that's a case of, yeah, how we, how we structure work, what we expect, or how our workers spend their time. But also, I think understanding a bit of the psychology around it. So there's, there's a, there's a state called flow, and that's when we're in full immersion of an activity. That's when, you know, when you kind of, you're doing something and you look up and you're like, how is it 4 o'clock?
Al ElliottHmm.
Leanne ElliottYou'd like, time loses all meaning. That's being in a state of And getting into that state requires a few things, but the main thing that it absolutely requires is no interruptions. And I think this is as well where, um, you know, we talk about remote work and actually, really, that deep thinking work needs that more solitary time. And the reason it's important is when we get into that state of flow, research has shown that people are 500% more productive. Like, it's an insane amount. How much more productive people are when they can enter this state. So, when you look about what organisations have, the things they have now, what long meetings, or meetings, how many meetings a day? Hundreds.
Al ElliottMm-hmm.
Leanne ElliottUnplanned interruptions, just somebody in the office, or even on Slack, dinging you and asking you if you can do something, asking you a question. I think there's also this kind of thing around email. I think it's something ridiculous, like up to 6 hours a day can be spent on email. Something like, on average, people check their phones like 2,000 times a day. There's so many of these distractions that actually, if we think about streamlining our operations around us, streamlining the tasks that we're doing, and streamlining the demand on our attention, then actually it's going to be pretty easy to free up 20% of our working week.
Al ElliottI think what Leanne's saying is absolutely right. There's such easy ways to reduce the amount Let's face it, bullshit you deal with in an average day or week. However, there's other stuff as well. And this is gonna be listen up if you sell because Ferri's about to tell us an example of when someone came in and basically was about to waste their time and Ferri told them not to. Yesterday, I had a meeting here with, you know, an IT service provider. We are, you know, enhancing our security and everything. And they came to my office and they said, look, I'm gonna put together like a PowerPoint presentation in like 48 hours. I said, like, I don't need that. Just tell me how much it is, you know. And then there it is, 3 bullet points. I just wrote it down when they told me, okay, well, you know, send me like an email with these, you know, 3 bullet points and happy days. Don't spend like 48 hours on, you know, on a PowerPoint presentation showing your, you know, logo and everything because nobody cares. And they probably saved, you know, probably a few hundred pounds by just me saying this to them. I love this. There's a, there's a, there's a great, um, a guy called Mike Killen, um, who always says don't send proposals, just get them to agree what you want them to look, what you want the project to look like while you're on the sales call with them and just go, so I'll just send you a quick email with these, what we've agreed. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, fine. Send me a check. Done. Yeah, 100%.
Leanne ElliottAbsolutely. And even if, you know, even if you're like, no, it's a big part of our brand doing this, It's like, well, is the right person doing it? Like, I used to drive me nuts when I, when I was in Welfare to Work as a coach that I'd have so much paperwork to do and admin that I'd have to do it. I'd do it after work because I didn't want to lose time during the day that I could be spending and should be spending with my customers and the people I'm trying to support filling out paperwork. You know, it's more if you want to do that activity, great. But even just looking at who, who am I?
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottPaying right now to develop this PowerPoint presentation, if you are paying a marketing consultant who you bill out at, you know, £250 an hour, when you could be bringing in an intern or a great administrator, um, you know, you divert that value-added time back. So then you're going to be generating more revenue. So you could go down to a 4-day work week.
Al ElliottNow, what's interesting is that we always use this term 4-day work week, but Jo seems to think that it doesn't have to be full, like 20% reduction. It can basically be whatever you want it to be. Time reduction doesn't necessarily need to be a full 20% reduction, although that's kind of the gold standard that lots of companies have gone for. It can be, you know, more staggered or incremental. Same pay, but a commitment to delivering the same output. And often this materializes in businesses whereby we're not talking about necessarily changing contracts. Some companies will kind of do this as just an opt-in policy for the trial. They might then later regularize contracts if they make it permanent. And it's that positive tension within the organization that really can create some quite extraordinary results.
Leanne ElliottI think there is a danger that we are just gonna anchor to this idea as business leaders and go, well, if that's what we need to strive for, that's what we need to do. And that's what I'm gonna have to bend my business into being. And I think, again, it's the point, and this is where I get a bit nuts as a psychologist is that people are quick to grab onto the intervention. What we need to do to improve wellbeing is implement a 4-day work week. What we need to, to do to have more fun in work is put a ping pong table in the break room. Where the point is, it's about reducing our amount of time at work so we increase our recovery time off of work, which then means that psychologically, mentally, we're stronger, more engaged with our work, and have that, that more energy to focus. The reason we have ping pong tables in the break room is because we know that by encouraging people to take breaks, They're more productive because they don't run out of steam. They get a chance to recharge. So we're not saying that implementing a 4-day work week is gonna be the, you know, the silver bullet that, that solves all workplace culture challenges and all mental health challenges with our employees. It doesn't. The point is, is about reducing our time at work, increasing our focus time at work, and increasing our recovery time at work. There's loads of different ways of doing this. There is a, an, a, um, Um, an experiment I was reading about that's happened in Australia recently, and they are trialing the 6-hour workday. So 5 days a week but only 6 hours at work. So the business leader behind this said that the shorter workday forced his team to prioritize effectively, which is what we've heard from our experts as well, um, limit interruptions, which we know is important because it then gives people the time to invest in more deep thinking work and getting to this state of flow. But he also said that it found that people operated at a much more deliberate level for the first few hours of the day. And I think it comes back to what Banks was saying about prioritising. And what they found is that the team maintained, and in some cases increased, its quantity and quality of work, with some people also reporting an improved mental state, more rest time, More family time, more time for friends and other endeavours as well. So, I think it goes to show that it's not about being as rigid as like, oh, well, the 4-day work week is the thing to aim for. It's even just thinking about what is it the 4-day work week is trying to achieve. It's trying to reduce number of hours at work, increase focused hours at work, and increase recovery time.
Al ElliottMm-hmm.
Leanne ElliottI think if the business leader, if you look at your business with those 3 kind of objectives lives in mind, then it might not be a 4-day work week. Another thing I've heard is, is kind of a, a 9-day fortnight. Um, so yeah, I think there's lots of different ways you can do it, but remember what the, the reasons behind the 4-day work week. That's why we're seeing such cool results, not because it's 4 days in the office, because of the, the intention and what it means for us in terms of our work life and our home life.
Al ElliottCould not agree more. That is, yes, absolutely. And you know what's funny is one of the biggest pushbacks for the for why you couldn't do or why this person couldn't do the 4-day work week is they go, my business is different. It wouldn't work like that.
Leanne ElliottUnfortunately, you know what business was different, Al?
Al ElliottWhat?
Leanne ElliottBlockbuster.
Al ElliottYeah. Yeah. I'm not sure anyone younger, younger than 30 will know who we're talking about. But I think the point, the point is that it's a diff— they go, my, but my business is different. And us business owners, we're very protective about things. We go, oh, no. My business is very different. business isn't, isn't different really. If you've got people working for you, then Leanne's the kind of person you need to speak to because she knows exactly how they work, like literally how they tick and how they work. Um, so one of the biggest things—
Leanne ElliottOh, there's some marketing thing in that.
Al ElliottWhat?
Leanne ElliottHow we, how you work. Some double— is it a double entendre? Is that what it's called?
Al ElliottI don't know. I think double entendre is when you make it a bit rude.
Leanne ElliottOh.
Al ElliottMaybe it's, uh, but we'll, we will—
Leanne ElliottWe'll do some research.
Al ElliottWe'll put that in our planning meeting tomorrow morning.
Leanne ElliottLet's put a pin in that. We'll circle back We'll get to it later.
Al ElliottOh, God.
Leanne ElliottWe'll whiteboard it tomorrow. Oh, no.
Al ElliottI just had to throw up. Anyway, so the biggest pushback is it won't work for my business. But Joe points out that that might be right because for some business models, it can be hard to do this kind of thing. So I would never argue that every role or every profession today that doesn't work a 5-day, 9-to-5, that all of a sudden We're going to find a way that they're going to start working a 4-day 9-to-5. So this idea that, you know, it's not a one-size-fits-all model, really at the heart of that is, is the understanding that what we're really talking about here is moving from the 5-day 9-to-5 to the 4-day being the new normal, effectively being the new standard arrangement across the economy. Of course, underneath that, there will need to be different kinds of flexible arrangements to accommodate different kinds of work. People that already work abnormal shift patterns, people that, you know, don't want to work a kind of a regular structured 5-day work week. But I would argue that there aren't very many job roles or businesses or industries that currently work 5-day, 9-to-5 that couldn't find a way, and with the right imagination, with the right culture, and with the right processes, to move to a 4-day working week. But if you've got a customer-facing role, Or a team where, you know, a big part of their value is about being available, being responsive to customers across 5 days, sometimes even 6 or 7 days, then this is a different thing. The other thing that Banks points out is that it's not gonna work if the leaders aren't 100% on board. The biggest thing I see and say you're not ready for is if the senior leadership team is not fully bought in, and maybe you have an HR manager who's interested, but the CEO is not fully bought in, then I say, hey, that really is critical because you need to have the leadership walk the talk early on. It definitely is not for everybody. And there are certain business models that lend themselves better to 4-day work weeks than others, right? So if you're billing by the hour as a lawyer or something, it's harder because the unit of time is connected to the economic value that you generate for your company. I think Banks makes this excellent point. He says, if you are billing hourly, then if you just go to a 4-day work week, you're knocking 20% off your revenue.
Leanne ElliottYeah, I think it is a really good point. And I think it is thinking about your your business model. But again, I think it's thinking about, does my— can my business model change to accommodate this? And I mean, you know, law is a difficult thing because anything, you know, billing by the hour at that level, we're talking a significant amount of money. But I think it's even as simple as, you know, you charge for an outcome, you charge a price for a product, um, and you do that same in terms of a, of a project. Um, similarly, you know, your performance Manage people not by the number of hours they work, but the work they're producing, the quality of it, you know, the objectives, their delivery, their performance targets. I think if we think more, a bit more about outcome rather than process, then I think it, it, it might help us reimagine our business models in a way that will facilitate a 4-day work week.
Al ElliottYeah, Joe totally agrees. So, it is a challenge, and it does mean that if you're a law firm or a marketing agency or an accounting Mm-hmm. In practice that bills by the hour, that is an additional complication that you need to deal with in order to make this work. But you can make it work. And businesses in those sectors who, you know, bill by the hour have made it work. And the way that they've done it, um, for the most part is either number one, they have found enough efficiencies in their non-billable time or in their non-billable overheads that they've been able to maintain the level of billable hours and the level of client time that they have at in and around the same level, or they have changed the way they bill. So they've either partly or wholly moved to fixed fee, value-based, or project-based billing, and which has obviously meant that they're effectively decoupling the direct relationship between time and revenue. And often the solution might lie somewhere in between. We've seen law firms and we've seen marketing agencies who have achieved this through some combination of those 2 things. Now, Ferry is in an industry, um, like I'm just going to say marketing agents because I know it's not exactly what Ferry does, but marketing agencies where traditionally you do kind of pay per hour or there's a bundle of hours that you sold. So his business model is not selling by the hour deliberately, but he's also still found that by eliminating certain things, you can easily find the extra 20 You would have to revolutionize your operations. So maybe if you sell less time with a 4-day workweek, then you might have to eliminate some other processes where the time is being spent that's not paid, that's unpaid. So if you're selling time, then you can still do it, but you have to reduce the amount of work that people are doing on tasks that are unpaid, like having a process where you create a PowerPoint presentation for this client that takes 1 day every week so that you can provide a report. You probably don't need that. You just send them a list of things that you've done in a few bullet points and happy days instead of spending 5 hours unpaid time, right? That's not— they're not paying you for the PowerPoint, they're paying you for the results, just scrap that PowerPoint. Nobody cares about your dogs and your cats in the office. You know, they care about, you know, these 5 bullet points and nothing else.
Leanne ElliottDid you know that the UK's number 1 management podcast, that's us, by the way, and the UK's number 1 marketing podcast are both on the same podcast network?
Al ElliottWe actually have a lot in common.
Leanne ElliottWe both use behavioral science to help people do better And we both had to wrangle Rory Sutherland on an episode.
Al ElliottAnd 2 out of 3 of us are devilishly good-looking. And you're not gonna say which. Phil, host of Nudge, UK's number 1 marketing podcast. It's brought to you— we need to do this in 3s—
Leanne Elliottthe HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.
Al ElliottSeamless, seamless. Tell us about your latest episode, Phil. Uh, we've just done an episode with episode on fake fandom and how New York indie bands are paying agencies to create fake TikTok videos about how much they like their work. And we talk about the behavioural science behind fandom and how that encourages people to enjoy the music and all of that good stuff, and do some big things about how this affects the world of politics, business, and brands as well.
Leanne ElliottIt is, it's such, it's such a good show. Of course, you'll hear all the stuff you want to hear about how to grow your business by using behavioural science in your marketing, but there's also just some really interesting episodes that'll be right up your street. Personally, I enjoyed Can Balsamic Vinegar Make Beer Taste Better?
Al ElliottIt can.
Leanne ElliottAnd Are We All Just Status-Seeking Monkeys?
Al ElliottI am. Go and listen to Nudge wherever you get your podcasts.
Leanne ElliottBut come back.
Al ElliottYeah, come back. Definitely come back because Nudge isn't as good as this. So come back.
Leanne ElliottI'll cut that out.
Al ElliottKeep that in. One of the things that doesn't seem to be talked about is how this improves the employer brand. We asked Joe what other knock-on effects this 4-day work week could have. One business that I worked with in the US, Healthwise, they're a nonprofit that do healthcare information services, about 250 people based in Boise, Idaho, came to us in October 2021, had a huge issue with employee turnover. And, you know, we're losing a lot of, a lot of key staff. They introduced the 4-day week effectively in response to that. late summer that year, and their employee attrition has reduced to effectively zero. On the other hand, when you look at recruitment, you take companies like Atom Bank, Tyler Grange in the United Kingdom. Both of those businesses have reported an increase in applications for open job postings of more than 60%. So what I would say is when it comes to productivity, that's the piece that it's not guaranteed. It's not like you reduce your employees' hours And all of a sudden, magically, you have a 20% improvement in efficiency and productivity. It's all about the process, and it's all about the way that you implement this. But the one area that, at least right now, is almost a guarantee is that I haven't yet discovered a business that's moved to a shorter workweek that hasn't seen a very significant benefit when it comes to talent attraction and retention in a tight labor market where things like flexible work, offering remote hybrid working, These are things that many businesses relied upon to give themselves a competitive edge 3, 4, 5 years ago. Now those things are often the standard expectation within industries. They're turning to the shorter workweek as the new thing that can really give them an edge.
Leanne ElliottBanks has also seen a huge improvement in retention and recruitment.
Al ElliottThe biggest driver I see for teams that are thinking about the 4-day workweek beyond just sort of organizational optimizations and getting smarter as a team around how you do your work is around recruiting and retention. retention. How do you recruit top talent? And, and how do you retain that talent, especially for small businesses? I say, you know, you might not be in the top 1% of compensation against big tech companies and high-paying competitors, but you can be in the top 1% of work weeks. And that's a tool and advantage around recruiting and retention of talent.
Leanne ElliottSeems to make sense to me what we know about what people want from, from work nowadays. I am not surprised that that companies that have a 4-day work week are holding on to their people and attracting talent. Um, so I guess my question is, what, what were the surprises? That one seems, seems, you know, fairly straightforward, but were there any surprises when implementing the 4-day work week? We asked banks.
Al ElliottThere were so many things that we were, we were surprised about. The number one fear I had was, what would our external partners, investors, and clients think? And we were really thoughtful about how we communicate with them. And when I advise teams, that's the number one concern I get is, what are people gonna think on the outside? How will they respond to this? I think viscerally all of us recognized that we don't necessarily, we're not at our peak performance for 40 continuous hours over the course of a work week. Again, not all hours are created equal. And so I think there's a visceral sense of, yeah, I probably could get my job done in less time. And so the big surprise I think is that people recognize, wow, It's the external reception was more welcome than I had originally feared. The other thing that has been a surprise for me is that the 4-day— moving from a 5-day to a 4-day workweek is in some ways easier than moving from a full in-person team to a fully remote team. Going from fully in-person to fully remote, which of course many teams had to do during COVID is actually in some ways a much harder transition. That actually, I think, has bigger implications on business outcomes than moving from 5 days to 4 days. Ferry also had a couple of surprises around productivity and communication. Problems of productivity in the first, you know, probably first 1 or 2 weeks. We didn't know how to measure what people were doing. We have just quit tracking time, so we don't track any time of our employees. So we have just quit doing that. And then we didn't know how to You know, quantify the work that people do. Also communication. What happens if a client messages on Fridays? And, and then sometimes we had a, we had a message on Thursday afternoon by a client, and they also messaged us on Friday afternoon being like frustrated, like, I messaged you yesterday and this is quite urgent and why are you not replying? And then that, that was one of the problems. Our process for that is every time a client joins, we make them aware of the fact after 4 PM on Thursday, you will not hear from us until Monday, and you have to deal with it. Then that was one of the, you know, big leaps that we have done by just having the courage to, you know, talk to clients and tell them, you know, this is how it is.
Leanne ElliottJoe also found that it had an impact on wellbeing.
Al ElliottSo one of the things that was actually observed within the trials was the amount of sleep that everyone participating was getting each night. And it turned out that sleep deprivation reduced. So sleep deprivation as defined by getting 7 hours or less, that went from 50% to 17% amongst trial participants. So people were sleeping on average about an hour extra per night, which is an interesting finding in and of itself. But I would also suggest that it's quite possible that, you know, the improvements in that indicator might also have given rise to other improvements elsewhere around general wellbeing. People being better refreshed and more energized at work, and that in turn having a positive impact on their productivity. So talking of productivity, we asked Banks about what the actual— what do you actually need to do to ensure that you maintain the productivity but then squeeze your week down to 4 days? He seemed to think there's actually easier to do this than moving from sort of fully office to hybrid. But from a cultural organizational perspective, moving from fully in-person to fully remote, that's a major shift. And I think that's something that many of us have done, certainly imperfectly in my case, and I think in others' cases as well. But the 5-day to 4-day shift is in some ways less transformational from a sort of how your business operates, how your team organizes, how your team collaborates. All those pieces, of course, are mediated through screens, through fully remote. There's a lot of dynamics to that. And so I think this in some ways was, was easier than that.
Leanne ElliottI wonder as well how many business leaders actually measure productivity or what metrics they use to measure productivity beyond how long people are, are in the office or how much they're billing. You know, maybe a 4-day workweek will prompt us to measure productivity properly for the first time.
Al ElliottSo people are trialing a shorter workweek effectively because they're being watched. Is that the reason for the kind of efficiency and productivity gains and therefore Once the trial period is over, you start to see some drop-off and you're not able to sustain that. And, you know, my answer to that would be twofold. First of all, if your business is only properly starting to measure productivity when you're running a 4-day week trial, then that's a problem that you need to look at and address. That would be the first thing. The second thing is, that's why the shorter work week, when we implement it with organizations, this is not like, you know, your entitlement to statutory sick leave or statutory holidays. This is something which is conditional. This is conditional on meeting certain objectives, targets, business objectives and goals. And therefore, it needs to feel to people like this is not a kind of a one-off change. This is not a policy. This is an ongoing commitment to continuous improvement. Number one, having in place a really quality, strong framework for measuring performance. And, you know, because for lots of managers, when, you know, they didn't have the day-to-day monitoring of presenteeism, which often for a lot of, you know, more managers with more traditional mindsets was kind of the go-to, you know, COVID kind of forced a step change on that. And I think for that reason, often companies who have already done that and who then move to shorter work weeks find to some extent, they've already done the hard part, you know, and that it doesn't feel like a radical step. It actually feels like a logical, um, transition because they've already figured out, you know, how to measure output in a really quality-consistent way.
Leanne ElliottA couple of things there I think our experts pointed out beautifully. One, we have already gone through one of the most disruptive transformations and changes and shifts in how we work and how we operate our business by going to fully remote and then hybrid. And yet, we haven't all done that perfectly. Um, but equally, you know, there's, there has been steps that have been made and businesses have made it work or invested to make it work or rethought how they work to make it work. And I think it's the same with the 4-Day Work Week. And the other thing as well, I think that Jo said, is, you know, you could trial this on the, on the condition, as long as you know how to measure performance and productivity, that if we don't hit these targets, guys, we're gonna have to go back to 5 days. I know that I'd be freaking motivated to, you know, to figure out how to prioritize and make myself more, more productive and, and, and hit my performance targets if, if that was the, the incentive that I had.
Al ElliottI think that was the biggest surprise to me, was that after speaking to Banks, um, and Joe, um, they were saying that this, this isn't like we're now going to be 4 days. most companies trial it. And so Banks explained why this is really important. You know, there's always this tension in workplaces of once you provide a benefit, it's always hard to roll it back at the end of it. When we announced the pilot, we were very clear that the burden of proof was on the pilot to prove us wrong and that we were going to return to a 5-day workweek unless the data was so convincing and clear. And so I think that the messaging from leadership is really important. as they think about trying a time-bound experiment of a shorter work week so that the team recognizes that the default will be to return to 5-day work weeks.
Leanne ElliottI love that. What a brilliant approach in, in terms of messaging. And again, that transparency proving again for his banks, the transparency behind leadership decisions is so important. Joe also points out that, yeah, of course it can be reversed if it doesn't work.
Al ElliottI've seen organizations reverse it temporarily. I've seen organizations trial it and it hasn't worked. I've seen organizations commit to it and even announce it and then get cold feet and not go ahead with the trial. The first number of weeks, and in some cases the first number of months, it felt almost like moving to a different country. I think a lot of that came down to, you know, not having had that kind of planning and preparation phase done right. And I think that that's a really important thing that companies need to think about. You know, nobody is saying that this is easy. You know, like, I am not arguing that moving to a 4-day week is really straightforward. It's a very significant change that requires a very significant commitment to operational excellence. But if you can find a way to pull it off, like many others before you have done, then the benefits of this for your business and your people are real and they're significant. By now, you've probably heard Ferry, and you've probably guessed what Ferry did. He just did it. So everything we do at the company, we want to be not just like the average, you know, and just being part of the sheep, right? We want to stand out, and we want not just to stand out, but stand out in a good way. And I've committed to paying our employees the best for their skills in the industry. And then also providing them, like, by far the best workplace they can ever have. Therefore, the 4-day workweek was one of the things that seemed extreme back in May 2022. And we said, we're not even going to test, test it and see if it works or not. We will just do it. And then if it doesn't work, we'll adapt and we'll find ways to make it work. Therefore, we invested into new systems, new processes. We had to revamp how we work, and it worked. It just worked. And if it didn't work, then we found a way to, you know, resolve the problems that have come up as, you know, as we were progressing with this initiative. So I just wanted to be, you know, the best employer in this industry, and introducing the 4-day workweek is part of this.
Leanne ElliottSo 2 different perspectives there. Joost saying, you know, you can put it as a pilot, and the pilot is really there to prove us right, a 4-day workweek won't work. Ferry is taking a very different approach and going, we'll just do it, we'll just do it, we'll make it work. Um, 2 very different extremes. And of course, you know, however you choose to roll it out, there is, there is a concern. Will it work or will it not? How much pain are we gonna have to go through in rolling this out? And Banks also had concerns when he did it back in 2019.
Al ElliottSo many concerns, like hundreds of concerns about it, you know. And I think that It was not one of those things that you go into it saying, oh, we're not worried about it at all. I mean, as a CEO, I was worried about what would our major funders and investors think? What would our clients and partners think? How would it affect revenue? Would we get less work done? Would we be considered less seriously? Do we actually, as a team, can we prioritize more important work and deprioritize work that's not essential? How do we get this distributed across the entire organization? I mean, there were so many questions that we had.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottAnd now when I'm coaching teams, it is not like this is a panacea and you suddenly move to a 4-day workweek and all of your problems are solved. When I'm advising leaders about this, I say, if you think of it that way, then you should not be piloting a 4-day workweek whatsoever. The best way to think about it is that the 4-day workweek is a diagnostic tool that will surface the challenges, problems, inefficiencies in your business. Yeah. And it's going to get worse before it gets better. It's going to tell you, oh, these things are not working, or your team is spread too thin, or whatever those, whatever those things that are holding your organization back. And so in some ways, it is a good way to surface and reveal things that are not working so that you can address them. And for me as a CEO, I think a lot of CEOs are like this. They would rather know what's not working so that they actually have visibility into it and can begin to address it as opposed to Bank has also just perfectly summed up the argument for doing employee engagement and getting employee insights.
Leanne ElliottYou need to know about these challenges to address them. And I think, again, just showing Banks' commitment to workplace culture and what it takes to really invest in creating an environment where people can thrive. I think there might be a danger, as we kind of mentioned before, that we're going to get too stuck on this idea of it being a 4-day work week. And, you know, once we've got our 4 days, that's it, we're done. That's all the flexibility we need. Um, so be it. But of course, you know, it's not going to be the silver bullet, um, because we're still going to have people like parents that need more flexibility. Maybe we have people that enjoy working 5 days a week. We asked Joe, what are his thoughts?
Al ElliottYou know, I think that this comes to another misconception that we find about the 4-day week, which is we're not talking about something that is really rigid where once you move to a 4-day week, you eliminate all flexibility. Sometimes you need to show a degree of flexibility, the odd weekend, the odd evening, and to be able to accommodate that. The same is true for a 4-day workweek. What we're talking about is moving the needle on the standard expectation, but acknowledging that there might well be times that you need to be flexible with that. And one business that we've worked with in Australia, Inventium, have moved to a 4-day week structure, but they call it effectively the gift of the 5th. 3 out of every 4 weeks, people get that day fully off, and then maybe 1 in every 4, they might have to do an hour, they might have to do 2 hours to make sure they keep on top of everything. And employees are understandably quite happy with that arrangement.
Leanne ElliottYeah, well said. I think it's, you know, we have a 5-day work week, but A lot of us will still work a couple of hours in the evenings or a day at the weekend if we want to catch up on something or spend more time on something. It'll be the same with a 4-day work week. I love what Jo said there, it's creating a new standard and then building flexibility expectations around that. Another concern that I sometimes get from business leaders when we're looking into workplace culture and the different interventions that we can do is, is it just a fad? Is this just the latest sexy thing that, that, you know, the younger workers in our workforce, the Gen Z, the younger millennials, are jumping onto? How do I know that this isn't just a Gen Z thing? We asked Joe.
Al ElliottI think there's probably some degree of a generational divide, but I wouldn't say that that is, you know, the big differentiator. Actually, it's much more about openness to innovation. And, and even if you look, you know, across the different industries, I think those businesses that kind of were ahead of the game when it came to, you know, really embracing remote working, asynchronous communications, Things like that tend to be the same kinds of businesses that are more likely to see themselves as you know a pioneer within their industry or someone that's going to take the lead on testing something like a shorter working week. So I do see in the comment sections a lot of these people have got lots of concerns about it, and quite rightly too. It's a new thing. So I asked Banks, in his experience of helping companies transition to a four-day work week, what kind of questions do people? Many companies have been able to do this without a loss in revenue, without a loss in all the big fears. Like, oh, actually, it's possible. And then the question that I get all the time was, well, how do we do it here? And that's really been the focus of the course and of the coaching that I do is saying, you know, we can try to sell you on the 4-Day Workweek, but if you're sort of not convinced about it, we're probably unlikely to sell you on it. We're looking for people that are saying, we've heard about this, it looks interesting. I have concerns about my business. It's fundamentally different and unique than all the other ones that have tried it. You don't understand why ours might not work and how does it actually roll out and what's the sequence of steps and how should we think about bank holidays and what do we think about these HR policies? When do you sequence certain things? All those things are sort of the big questions that come up. And so, a lot of the questions that I get are very tactical operational questions around it. Then I think we get into a bunch of operational things, which is where I spend most of my time is on that stuff. Although those bigger questions, of course, are interesting to me too. So, yeah, I think most of the questions I get are around sort of operationalizing. One of the biggest fears I think is what happens If you lose clients? What happens if people don't like it? What happens if revenue goes down? So I asked Ferry, did you see a reduction in clients? No, no, no. In fact, we have just been winning more and more clients. I don't think that makes any difference. You know, even the fact that we don't do meetings with clients. So we tell the clients, you know, we have a 4-day workweek, we're not going to spend time in meetings with you. And that It doesn't put off anyone. People understand, you know, but I think if you provide a good service, like good results for your clients, in our case, you know, getting them the links that we promised, then, you know, all of these things they understand and they can deal with the fact that we're not going to have weekly meetings with 5 team members talking about the last week's, you know, 5 links that we landed. We just send them a spreadsheet.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottHere's the links, um, have a nice weekend, right? And that's how we simplify everything. They don't want meetings either, they just don't know it.
Leanne ElliottI remember listening to, um, a podcast, uh, with a, a woman who was a consultant and talking about how she charges for her time. And the thing that she said is that I will never charge anyone for a question over email. I'll manage expectations around kind of another time scale around my one when I reply, but I'll never charge anyone for it. If a client wants a, a meeting, like a virtual or a conversation, even telephone meeting, I will charge by the 15-minute slot. I said it's amazing how many people suddenly realize that that question can be answered in an email, not a telephone call.
Al ElliottAnd now there's something called AutoGPT where you can set up ChatGPT instances as like a virtual assistant. So you've got all that, you've got automation, you've got all kinds of stuff. So I asked Joe, do you think that AI and automation is going to have a massive impact on this? I think that automation and AI and the impact of that on business is here to stay. And I think we're going to see, you know, an increasing impact on job roles, professions, businesses, industries over the coming decade. And actually, I think that's part of the macro argument for a shorter working week. You know, back when John Maynard Keynes was predicting we'd all be working 15 hours a week by the end of the last century. Even the, the US Republican President Richard Nixon foresaw the 4-day week coming down the tracks back in the '60s. So I think that there's a very strong argument that as we head into this 4th industrial revolution of digitalization, AI, automation, robotics, that the 4-day week is actually a way that we can tangibly share the benefits of productivity advancement and technological advancement with workers in a way that, if we're being honest, we didn't really do with the last 20 or 30 years' worth of progress.
Leanne ElliottWhat a statement, eh? How do we tangibly share the benefits of productivity advancement with our workers?
Al ElliottHe's got a way with words, Jo, hasn't he?
Leanne ElliottIt's just so right though, isn't it? We're not talking about making less money or, or we're just squeezing, continue to squeeze people until point of that they break. Um, yeah, Joe, you are, you are my new favorite person.
Al ElliottI knew you'd like it.
Leanne ElliottBut you know, of course, this isn't— I think the other misconception as well with the 4-day work week, and maybe why leaders panic, is going, oh my God, we need to do everything we do now and fit it into 4 days. Like, the, the 4-day work week isn't just a compression of your week, as our experts have explained. This is a fundamental transformation of how you work, your business model, how you engage with clients. It's a huge change. And Ferry agrees that it is absolutely vital you understand what this actually is.
Al ElliottAnd for what I suggest others do as well, if they want to do 4-Day Work Week, it means we actually cut one day from the work. And it doesn't mean we just took those hours and compressed them into the other 4 days, right? It means it's really a 4-day work week. It's not like 5 days work week compressed into 4 days, right?
Leanne ElliottAnd it's also about being a decent leader.
Al ElliottI think the most important thing is just to be kind with people because as a manager or even as a CEO, you might think that now people are going to take advantage, blah, blah, blah. And yeah, some Some might take advantage, but most of the people will actually love the initiative and they will be good humans when you provide this to them. It's always starting from kindness. Just be kind and understanding with people and just don't micromanage them either. You need less micromanagement because If you give them an extra Friday every week where they can go and take yoga classes, or they can go and spend more time, you know, with their kids, um, or they can, you know, go to the gym and have a better, better life outside work, everyone, everyone will be very grateful.
Leanne ElliottI find that objection in general quite frustrating from leaders. that some people will take advantage. There'll be a 4-day work week, whether it be working from home, being fully remote, whether it be people working remotely but in a different country for a couple of weeks. Oh, people take advantage. They'll be on, they'll be on the beach with a piña colada. Well, you do not just trust— you do not trust your people. And if you don't trust your people, how do you effectively manage them and lead them and create this sense of camaraderie and vision and passion that is needed. If you don't trust people, what relationship do you possibly have with them that is productive and, and long-term? You know, there's no mistake that when trust is lost from a marriage or a relationship, it deteriorates and breaks. Like, if you don't have trust, that relationship is going to deteriorate and break. And that's what we see with all the research around wellbeing and engagement. If people don't feel trusted in their work, to do their job well, then they disengage. And that's the real problem that you want to be worrying about, because when people disengage, they're much less productive. When people disengage actively, they'll be actually trying to sabotage what's happening in your organization and what you're trying to do, and then they're going to leave, which costs you thousands and thousands of pounds in recruitment and training again. And secondly, if you don't trust people, why the hell are you bringing them into your business? One of our experts, I think it was last week actually, I can't— maybe it was, maybe it was Bonnie who made a really beautiful point. She was like, at some point, you— this person has been chosen. This is the chosen one that I am bringing into my business. If you don't trust them at that point in recruitment, or you've not even got something within your recruitment process to understand, help you understand if this person is trustworthy, what the fuck are you doing? I'm sorry, but it's just, it's just The stupidest excuse. Oh, people will take advantage. You've just told me everything you need to tell me about your workplace culture.
Al ElliottInteresting. Interesting. You obviously make some really, really good points there. And, and I think this whole idea of trust, it just underpins anything you wanna do at work, whether it's work from home, whether it is, like you've said, whether it's a 4-day work week, whether it's giving people— I know that, I know people who don't have full access to client lists because they're worried that someone's gonna go and steal them.
Leanne ElliottOr certain systems.
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottThat makes the kind of workflows really clunky. Yeah. Yeah.
Al ElliottIt's just, it's just stupid. 'Cause like Leanne said, you've gotta trust them and you're just gonna, and some people will fuck you over at some point. 'Cause that's just life.
Leanne ElliottThat's just life, isn't it?
Al ElliottBut that's life.
Leanne ElliottSomeone's gonna break your heart.
Al ElliottIt, do you know what? That's exactly the analogy I was gonna go with. Okay. So, um, if you are convinced at this point that 4, that a 4-day work week is for you, Or at least you just want to find a bit more about it, then Joe and Banks are basically the experts. Now, if you are a larger organization, then you probably gravitate towards Joe. If you're a smaller organization, then Banks is probably your man. So I asked Banks a little bit more about his program. Yeah, so my program is targeted at small businesses, small teams of under, say, 20 to 25 people. And then the program really walks through 4 steps. First is, how do you design a 4-day workweek pilot? And again, so the whole entire focus is on before you, before you buy it forever, why don't you try it out over the course of a pilot? You design it, then you begin as a team to plan it, then you actually run a pilot, then you measure it and evaluate if you want to keep it for the long term. How do you begin to facilitate a process internally where your team can consider ways to prioritize and deprioritize? How do you look at priorities in the company and figure out if those are the most essential? How do you— what are the HR dimensions to it? Thinking about local municipal issues of HR issues. So going through everything from operationalizing it. And the course is an online resource that's manifested through a series of modules, lessons, videos, PDFs. And this is the course that I wanted for myself. When we went through the 4-Day Work Week pilot and gives— creates an evergreen resource. Once you get into the program, you have these modules, lessons, PDFs forever, and you can kind of refer back to them. Yeah, smartworkweek.io is the best place to go. And the program's there. You can access the course and also provide some specific coaching with me. So people have access to an online set of resources and guides and videos. They also have access to specific additional questions via phone calls and coaching with me.
Leanne ElliottWhat a brilliant service. I think if you have any concerns or need this helping hand through this, a tried and tested method, then I think it's brilliant. Could you imagine if we would have had that, the shift to remote work, at the start of the pandemic?
Al ElliottI know, I know. But I'm glad it's, I'm glad it's around now. Now, Jo also does something similar, but again, for slightly larger organizations, And he has a very specific process he goes through. Is this right for you? Are you ready for it? What will it look like? What are the things that will need to be addressed? Because it's not one size fits all, then our model to kind of help companies implement this is also not one size fits all. So it's very customized based on what are the needs of the company and what's the kind of, you know, what's the baseline based on that diagnostic that we do. The first thing that we would tend to do with, with, with companies is a diagnostic process, which looks at their processes, their culture. It takes a holistic view of this in order to kind of answer 3 key questions. Number one, how ready are you for a shorter working week? Second question is, what are the pain points? What are the potential issues and challenges that you might need to overcome in implementing this? And then the third thing is, what's the right model? So what's the pros and cons of different Whether it's 4-day week, 9-day fortnight, half-day Friday, shorter workdays, universal day off, rosters.
Leanne ElliottYou are right. I love, Joe, the first step, a diagnostic, whatever that intervention, whether it's a 4-day workweek, whether it's a wellbeing program, whether it's a mentoring program, it's a team building day. How does this fit into the changes that you're trying to make within your culture? How are we going to measure that? How are we going to know exactly what solution is right. It's not, it's not always very sexy, but the first step should always be understanding exactly where you are now. Joe, you're my new favorite.
Al ElliottOkay, so we have covered an awful lot here. We've talked about the problems with doing it, we've talked about the concerns around it, we've talked about what business models it does and doesn't work for, uh, we've talked all about whether it's a trend And whether it's just faddy or not. Um, and we've also shown you, given you 2 great experts you can go and talk to a little bit more. All of the links will be in the show notes. Leah, anything you want to add to this?
Leanne ElliottThe only thing that I would add is that given the state of the workplace now, this, the rising cases of burnout, the continuing low levels of engagement, and didn't we see some statistics come out Last year around, um, 20% of productivity being lost per employee per week. Well, that's your 4-day work week right there. Um, I think it's kind of the thing of we haven't got it right. In fact, right now we're getting it horribly, horribly wrong. So if we're looking at any change, whether it's a 4-day work week or not, let's not pretend that we've got it right and this is going to disrupt things for, you know, for the worst, that the chances are if it's done well, it's gonna make significant improvements, not only in terms of our business's performance but our employees' well-being as well.
Al ElliottBravo, bravo. And that's, that's the reason you listen to this podcast, because we get experts in, but then Leanne is just brilliant at coming in with a little summary that just makes you go, huh, she's right, you know. So next week we have got a generational panel. I think Leanne put that together. You've done— you've actually done a video on this one, haven't you?
Leanne ElliottYeah, this is exciting. So it's our first full video podcast that is going to be coming out next week, so you'll be able to see the full video on the YouTube. Um, and also, if you don't watch Gavin and Stacey, that'll make no sense. Um, so yeah, you guys see what it is.
Al ElliottIt's quite cheeky.
Leanne ElliottSome of it is, although our generational panel isn't. Um, it's very, very clever and sensible and insightful. Um, so yeah, that's exciting. Um, and yeah, we'll also be at the Water Cooler, as we mentioned at the top there, next week as well. Um, so yeah, we'll hopefully see some of our lovely listeners there. Come and see us. Um, and for those of you who can't make it, thank you for listening.
Al ElliottYes, we really appreciate it. We'll send you a check in the post. Finally, if you do want to make sure your website is ranking on Google, then go and look at Ferry's company. The link is in the show notes. Really, I just love how simple it is. I mean, if nothing else, just go and get him to pitch you on what, what his company does and how much it costs, and you'll just go, huh, he's just simplified the lot. It's brilliant. Really like the guy. And also go and check out on LinkedIn because he's fucking— he's hilarious on LinkedIn. Um, you'll see he's sitting there on a sofa with, I think it was Brad Pitt. I can't remember. It might be Leonardo DiCaprio.
Leanne ElliottHe's rubbed shoulders. Yeah, we will leave all the links to all of our guests, um, in the show notes, along with some more links from us, how you can join the conversation around truth and lies on LinkedIn, um, and some previous episodes as well. Dive into our back catalog.
Al ElliottSee you next week.
Leanne ElliottBye.