Stop us if you’ve heard this one before.
This is the third year of our four-day work week experiment, and we have an update.
Last year, we increased our four-day weeks to every other Friday, in addition to taking the entirety of summer as a four-day work week. This year, we’ve carried on the experiment, with a little bit of help from our friends (Asana, Google Meet, and Strava).
This is how it’s going so far.
The Prelude: Why Four Days?
It’s estimated that the amount of time spent on deep-focused work averages just over 4 hours and 48 minutes per day. When including collaborative work and multi-tasking opportunities into the overall calculations, the average employee is actively engaging with their work for a total of just under 7 hours – an hour less than the span of a typical work day.
Additionally, not all work is made equally: 1 in 20 professionals spends more than twenty hours in meetings, and 60% of other valuable time is spent on ‘work about work’, such as chasing for updates.
The quantity of work has significantly increased in the last handful of years, and the immediacy of email and work chats have pivoted towards an unsustainable working environment that ultimately can lead to burnout, low engagement, and dissatisfaction, thus stagnating company development. Above all, the four day work week is also a testimony to the belief that the mindset that prioritises astronomical growth at the cost of work-life balance is becoming increasingly unsustainable, both for business and the planet that we live in.
Remote work is not a cure-all for bad company culture, but coupled with employee-led initiatives and continuous amendments, we feel that the four-day work week is the way of the future working world – and we’re just getting started.
The Four Day Work Week, Year 3
Throughout the year, every alternative Friday is off; in summer, every Friday from June to October is off. Leave allowances and wages are untouched. In addition to Fridays off, while official working hours span between 9 – 5PM, employees can choose their own schedules and go out during the day to run errands, go to the gym, or work from different locations. Throughout the year, client meetings are scheduled from Monday to Thursday; the first year, Friday meeting requests were still very common, and they are down significantly this current year.
In addition to our four-day work-week experiment, we are also a fully remote company with team members working from around the world. This decision was taken post-COVID-19, when there was no significant decrease in productivity, which introduces a new paradigm to the four-day work week. Most of us have no commute, adding several valuable hours to our free time, with the caveat that there is also less structured time: lunch is a moveable opportunity, and while there is liberty in scheduling work, there is equally less liberty in sticking to allotted end-times or start-times for the work day. While this has not proven a detriment in our own case, companies that experience crunch or have more stringent work demands can find a fully-remote and four-day work week a difficult combination to adopt.
The benefits of a fully-remote, four-day work week
The ultimate aim of Switch’s working practices has always been to reduce the amount of time spent at work, and to complete more meaningful, high-quality, and valuable work for our clients. The three-day weekend falls in line with this plan, and additionally adheres to a changing understanding on work overall. Of the clients we’ve spoken to, most were understanding of the decision to remove communication on a Friday (and some have asked if we have any vacancies!).
Some of the benefits reported are:
- A greater feeling of restfulness on Mondays. The three-day weekend adds another day to finish off errands, meaning that the weekend is fully and totally left for enjoyable activities.
- Better work-life balance, and the ability to ‘reset’.
- Working days showed higher productivity and focus.
- Employee retention and recruitment prospects have increased.
- A general sense of pride.
Most notably, these benefits are in line with reports undertaken by much larger companies.
- Microsoft’s three-day weekends boosted productivity by 40%.
- 39% of employees in the UK experienced reduced stress levels due to the four-day week.
- Half of respondents in a pilot study in the UK noted improvements in productivity; the remaining only noted that productivity stayed the same.
- 56% of recruiters saw increased employee retention.
The challenges of a four-day work week
A four-day work week is not without its drawbacks, and while the benefits can be clearly seen, there’s less focus on the negatives of having less time to work. Specifically for Switch, the challenges we most ran into were:
- A greater difficulty in scheduling meetings, coinciding with the peak summer holiday months where parts of the team were unavailable.
- Completing more detailed and elaborate tasks in a shorter week and with less time.
- Coordinating with clients who work five days a week.
That said, it is significant that the challenges faced this year are far less than the ones experienced in our previous four-day work week experiment, and can possibly be rectified with restructuring further. Two years into the four-day work week experiment, many of the initial issues have been smoothed out – but not without a certain level of effort.
What does it take to make a four-day work week work?
For companies who are starting the four-day workweek themselves, this is a factor that is hardly spoken of: the effort, time, and practice it takes to perfect the way a four-day work week works within your organisation.
And while we can only supply the information that we have learned over three consecutive years of experimenting with Fridays off, whether in sequence or alternative.
The key factor to success is this: the leadership and management teams have undertaken the greatest task of streamlining Switch’s existing processes to remove opportunities for lag and delay. The biggest success of the four-day work week is down to this, and to realising that the company needed a set of values and principles to adhere to in order to make sure that we could take on the same level of work without the hitch of miscommunication.
This has not been easy.
But as a practice, it has been worthwhile, even outside of the four-day work-week experience. Streamlined processes and clearly communicated values mean that the potential for issues arising during work is much reduced, and as our clients continue to come to us from all corners of the world, and all around the clock, it has proven to be the most valuable asset for achieving high quality and repeatable results with a full eight hours of work removed from the week.
The four day work week: a global perspective
What the four day work week has taught us about the way we view work is equally valuable – and about the flawed understanding that working hard means working from the first crack of dawn to overtime, every day. As the studies above show, longer hours at work does not equal higher productivity or more complete working days, and the four-day work week at Switch is concurrent with those findings.
Additionally, what it has proven is that the pace of work has continued to accelerate, and that people are having trouble keeping up – but what that means is not trialling longer working weeks or shifting wholesale to AI to continue meeting and exceeding growth expectations that are developed slightly out of focus with the current reality.
What it does mean, and what Switch has decided to adhere to, is that we could all use sustainable growth measures over the idea of growth at all costs. Companies and company profits have reached record highs repeatedly, which has resulted in businesses staying open, unsociable hours increasing, and worker burnout on the rise. A step towards a more equitable way of working has proven great for us – and we believe it is the way forward for businesses.
The four-day work week may not work for you. But neither will the idea that you should spend most of your waking hours at work.
We don’t have all the answers. What we do have is proof that working longer hours is outdated, at least for us. Shorter working weeks has led to happier employees, healthier life balances, and a better environment within the workplace when we’re together.
If that isn’t the way forward for the future, it’s unclear what should be.
