News and Posts
Does the 4 day work week benefit business?
Here are 4 ways in which the 4 day work week benefits your business results in areas such as finances, human resources, employee engagement and organization.
What is the 100:80:100™ rule for the 4 day week?
We believe that a 4 day week is a 32-hour week, or 4x8-hour days of work. While many of the companies which trial the 4 day week decide to adopt the Friday-off model, this doesn’t necessarily work for all.
Different industries require different approaches. For example, organizations introducing a 4 day week to customer service centers would need to rotate the day off among their staff so as to maintain service levels.
Case study - Sharjah Government
An exercise in boosting productivity, health and family cohesion. In January 2022, Sharjah Government implemented a 4 day week scheme, making them the first local government in the United Arab Emirates to shorten the work week. Read on to learn about the impact this had on job performance, employee mental health and the local economy.
Case study - Kickstarter
Kickstarter is the leading crowdfunding platform for funding creative projects. Each year, they help fund about 20,000 creative projects across art, film, design, games, and publishing and drive about $700M in funding through our online platform. Their Chief Strategy Officer, Jon Leland, tells us how their 4 day week experience has been since launching it in 2021.
The young ones these days don’t want to work hard!
We forget, as we take our careers to the level of leadership, that stage of life is often just as important as age in life. The young ones I talk to all want to work productively, they want valuable work where they feel they are valued and their employers care about more than just making money. They also value being engaged with their families, communities and their health. Read more about What is work?
Case Study - The Walk
The Walk is an integrated marketing agency, based in Australia, working with leading brands around the world. Its co-founder and digital director, Nick Cantor shares their learnings from participating on a 4 Day Week Global pilot program and offers words of advice to those considering the move.
What really is work?
I am often asked, do you work a 4 day week? You would think that as a leader in this conversation globally I would be able to just say yes. However, for me, as it is for many people, the question is, what is work?
We often hear from people who “work” too many hours – “But I love my work!” - “ We have a real work ethic here.”
And this is fantastic, but for me I have been trying to get the heart of what REALLY is work. For our lives to be fulfilling and also to enable our society to be successful, being able to define what we need to work ON might help with this question.
What are the other things that we also describe as work?
Case Study - Trio Media
Trio Media is a full service digital marketing agency based in Leeds, UK. They help clients across a variety of industries with website design and builds, SEO, PPC and social media, along with supporting their overall digital marketing strategies. Their CEO, Claire Daniels shares her insights and experience of participating on 4 Day Week Global’s UK trial in 2022.
New legislation to pilot four-day week in Boston, Massachusetts
New legislation co-filed by Rep. Dylan Fernandes (D-Falmouth) and Rep. Josh Cutler (D-Duxbury) would create a four-day work week pilot program in Massachusetts.
The voluntary program would allow businesses to transition employees to a reduced work schedule without an overall reduction in pay. Participating employers would agree to regular reporting to help study the effects of transitioning employees and businesses to a four-day work week and in return could qualify for a tax credit.
Research indicates that four-day work week models have the potential to reduce burnout and boost performance among workers without affecting employer productivity. This legislation creates a two year pilot program run by the Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development to study the issue here in Massachusetts.
Case Study - Momentum Mental Health
Momentum Mental Health is a community mental health service with a team of 14 staff based in Queensland, Australia, who recently took part in our pilot program. Their CEO, Debbie Bailey shares her motivation for joining, lessons learned from the challenges faced, and words of advice to other business leaders considering making the switch.
FAQ - When is a 4 day week not a 4 day week?
Early in our 2018 experience with the 4 day week in our business Perpetual Guardian, we came across the problem which a lot of you also find. We can’t all take Fridays off; or, we don’t want to. What do we do with people who are already working four days or less, or those who are working more than 40 hours? I sat down with our team and we came up with our 100-80-100™ principle.
Case Study - Ireland
In February 2022, 4 Day Week Global launched the first of several coordinated international trials. It involved 614 employees across Ireland, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. The research involved surveying employees at the beginning, midpoint and end of the trial, compiling time-use diaries of employees’ days off, collecting monthly data on organisational performance and interviewing employees and managers at the end of the trial.
Unilever Australia & New Zealand expands four-day work week trial following encouraging results
Unilever Australia & New Zealand (ANZ) - maker of Kiwi household staples, Dove, Rexona, Surf, Persil, TRESemmé, Continental and Streets - has today announced it is continuing its 4 Day Work Week experiment in New Zealand and is extending the trial to Australia.
The expansion comes off the back of promising results from Unilever’s 18-month pilot in New Zealand, which saw all 80 employees participate in the trial. As part of the initiative, staff retain 100 per cent of salaries, while working 80 per cent of the time, while still committing to 100 per cent delivery for the business (100:80:100).
Growth and changes
As you have probably all seen the conversation about reducing work time including the 4 Day Week as certainly taken off around the globe since the pandemic. What started for Andrew Barnes and me as a passion project and grown into an international movement. We currently have 5 staff with another 3 to join us in the next couple of months. In the last two years and with leadership from Joe O’Connor, our CEO, our team have been busy with three things:
A life of interesting conversations
It has been an incredible first half of this year. With pilot programs running in Ireland, the United Kingdom, North America and Australasia, our team has grown to 6 full time people led by the very capable Joe O'Connor.
Andrew and I now have the chance to take a step back and work on more strategic plans, it allows us to have the time to imagine a world with reduced hours working for all.
Happy International Women’s Day
I’m posting this a day early because I’m ….. well let’s just say I have a brain surgeon in my life now. Anyway, I wanted to celebrate this important day by announcing that I am moving away from the CEO role at 4 Day Week Global, and shifting over to managing director so I can still be around to champion and drive the movement but also have time for the numerous other projects that I have on my plate.
It’s not a matter of Left or Right, the 4 Day Week is better for everyone.
Over the last few days there have been a couple of opinion pieces critical of the idea of the 4 Day Week. Usually I let these slide, I know our support of companies introducing a 4 Day Week, or some other reduced hour week will, in the end, show the way of the future, simply by the sheer number of companies doing it successfully.
And nowhere more is this likely that in the United Kingdom. And it is not a political issue, it is not a matter of the Left want this, Labour say that, this is a question about creating the society we want.
How the great resignation creates fertile ground for people to demand flexible working
The great industrialists have always understood the relationship between economic stimulus, productivity and time away from work: Henry Ford introduced the five-day week in his business 100 years ago, as a means to give his own workers time to buy his cars. It worked, and the developed world followed suit, shrinking the standard six-day week and codifying the norm that would remain ‘the working week’ for the next century.
In the post-pandemic workplace employees are taking control and deciding how they will work, leaving workplaces that do not listen.
The Truth Behind Six Major Myths
Even before the events of 2020, it was clear the future of work had arrived; the demands and functions of organisations, consumers and workers had been remade in the digital age, and earlier experiments with flexible work models have now become a bona fide movement.
Rep. Takano Introduces Legislation to Reduce the Standard Workweek to 32 Hours
I am introducing this legislation to reduce the standard workweek to 32 hours because – now more than ever – people continue to work longer hours while their pay remains stagnant. We cannot continue to accept this as our reality.