Four-day week: How to ask your boss for a reduced-hour work week
COVID-19 has helped smash assumptions about productivity and the way we work, making it a great time to ask your boss for a four-day work week. Here’s how to bring it up.
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A genuine four-day work week may sound too good to be true, but now could be the best time for workers to bring the idea up with their boss.
The COVID-19 outbreak has forced employers to rethink assumptions about flexible work and improved trust in their teams.
Recent trials of the four-day week around the world have shown that it is not only possible in many positions to complete 100 per cent of work in 80 per cent of the time, but that a reduced-hour model can have benefits for the company and employees alike.
In 2018, New Zealand estate planners Perpetual Guardian trialled a four-day week for its 240 staff.
Not only did they maintain job performance but reports of stress dropped from 45 per cent to 38 per cent and work/life balance increased from 54 per cent to 78 per cent.
Last year, Microsoft Japan ran a similar trial for 2300 of its office workers and experienced a 40 per cent jump in sales without increasing overtime.
4 Day Week Global chief executive Charlotte Lockhart, who was previously head of partnerships and marketing at Perpetual Guardian, says interest in the movement is growing and the COVID-19 pandemic has been a driver.
“COVID is expediting conversations but the reduced-hour work model was something lots of organisations were already beginning to realise was going to be beneficial to the profitability of their business,” she says.
“Being able to trust your staff is the key thing.
“There was a lot of distrust of staff in workplaces but now everybody has had to work from home we have had to trust them – apart form naughty companies that put their staff on all-day Zoom calls so they can keep an eye on them working.”
Lockhart says the four-day week or reduced-hour model has been applied in almost every sector of work somewhere around the globe.
“People say ‘it could never work in law’ and yet there are lawyers doing it,” she says.
“They say ‘it could never work in medicine’ and yet there are doctors doing it, ‘it could never work in schools’ and yet there are schools doing it.”
Right now, Australian business management consultancy Inventium is giving it a go.
The Melbourne-based team of 10 have been trialling a Monday-to-Thursday work week since July 1, measuring team members’ productivity, engagement, job satisfaction and intention to stay with the company long term
Founder Dr Amantha Imber says final measures will be taken at Christmas time but so far so good.
“We are two months in now and anecdotally from a company goals perspective, things are looking really good and everyone is really loving it,” she says.
“From all the research done around the four-day week, I don’t know of any companies where it had a negative impact.”
At Inventium, the team set Friday as everyone’s day off to avoid the “potential chaos” of everybody being away on different days.
Employees know if they can take Friday off “guilt-free” as each person has work goals that can be broken down by quarter, month and week.
If they are on track then the day is theirs. If not, they may spend an hour or so in the morning tying up loose ends.
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Imber has been using her spare time to work on her new podcast, How to Date.
Other employees have used theirs to volunteer, write thought leadership articles, explore study options or support children who are schooling from home during Victoria’s COVID-19 lockdowns.
“If you can be ultra productive on Monday to Thursday and you achieve everything you need to in your role, you can have the gift of time on Friday,” Imber says.
“I know if I don’t give in to digital distractions and I don’t procrastinate, I get a whole free day, which is pretty motivating.”
HOW TO CONVINCE YOUR BOSS YOU CAN HANDLE A FOUR-DAY WEEK
1 KNOW YOUR KPIs
“Make sure you have got clear KPIs (key performance indicators) and deliverables in your role.”
2 FRAME IT AS AN EXPERIMENT
“Don’t go ‘Can we do this permanently?’ but instead ‘Over a one or two or three-month period, can we try this and if we get these results, will you consider letting me continue on with this?’.”
3 SHOW THE NUMBERS
“There is a lot of research on companies that have trialled a four-day week so present data on what other companies have found in terms of successes – such as retention, productivity, engagement.”
4 THINK ABOUT OTHERS
“It does work more effectively if it is (applied to) an entire company or division within the organisation.
“If you just have one or two people doing a four-day week it would create envy from some teammates who are not doing that.”
5 REPLACE THE PAY RISE
“We falsely assume more money will make us happy … (but) more time and using that with loved ones or pursuing passions is what creates happiness.
“(A four-day week could be) far better than a pay rise so for companies that have a freeze on pay rises, this is a great way to give back to staff that are working hard and are committed.”
Source: Inventium founder Dr Amantha Imber
Originally published as Four-day week: How to ask your boss for a reduced-hour work week