The case for a (conditional) 4-day work week

This business has found success in parting ways with a mandatory Friday workday – but strings are attached.

Inventium is a behavioural science-based consulting firm that ran its own four-day working week trial back in 2020 – a practice that has remained in place since.

“It’s probably one of the most significant things that a leader of an organisation could do to attract great staff, retain great staff, and also experience the benefits of better wellbeing and productivity,” said Charlotte Rush, head of product development at Inventium.

The trial

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Inventium, like many other businesses, had to get creative.

After chief executive Michelle Le Poidevin had the idea, Ms Rush was given the responsibility of putting the shortened week into place. The first step: a pre-mortem.

“It’s kind of like a post-mortem but before anything bad has happened,” said Ms Rush.

“We go: if this was all to go horribly, what would have caused it to go wrong? But also, aspirationally, how could this have gone really, really well?”

What quickly emerged was a need to make the fifth-day contingent on hitting productivity goals.

The ‘gift of the fifth’

“We wanted to make sure that people understood it wasn’t just about having a three-day weekend,” said Ms Rush, “it’s actually about what you do at work on the other four days – that’s what enables you to possibly take that fifth day off.”

Inventium uses a trust-based approach to the conditional four-day week. It’s up to each employee to decide whether they have achieved enough work to get that fifth day off.

“It aligns with one of our key values: BYOB. It means be your own boss,” said Ms Rush.

“We really want people to act like you’re the founder of your own team. To make decisions in the best interest of the organisation and be responsible for your own workload and how you do your work.”

Building a goal-oriented culture

Surprisingly, when Inventium offered its employees the opportunity to work only four days, leaders had a harder time getting their employees to take time off than getting them to show up.

“A sceptic might look at [our approach] and assume people would always just take the fifth day off. But actually, we had the opposite problem where people wouldn’t take it off because they felt guilty,” said Ms Rush.

Inventium had to support its workers to feel comfortable in taking advantage of the optional fifth day of work.

“We had to support people to help them work out what ‘enough’ means for them in their roles. That really comes from looking at your goals and making sure you’re tracking them and ensuring you’re aligned with them in terms of wherever we are in the financial year.”

Across the trial, Inventium’s employees took the Friday off 76 per cent of the time. When they were taking it off, however, 60 per cent were still working one or two hours most of the time.

“It might be checking your emails; sometimes it’s working one or two hours,” said Ms Rush.

In building a culture where employees feel comfortable rewarding their hard work with an optional fifth day off, it’s important that expectations are clear.

“Building those kind of team norms is important. If someone happens to be working on a Friday and they send an email to someone else – I’ve heard people think they too should be working,” said Ms Rush.

Gathering data around how often employees chose to take the “gift of the fifth” proved to be useful in convincing reluctant employees to follow suit.

According to Ms Rush: “It was important for us to get the data to be able to say, you’re only taking your fifth day off 50 per cent of the time. How can we support you to take it more to bring you in line with the average?”

Not for everyone?

At Inventium, the idea of self-directed work was already baked into the culture so that when the trial began, the trust placed in employees was more of an extension than a revolution.

This raises the question of whether some businesses might have a harder time putting the same approach into place.

However, according to Ms Rush, the research and Inventium’s consulting experience suggests that some version of the four-day week can be made to work in every organisation.

“It’s not about this strict rule of suddenly working four days; it’s about gradually reducing the amount of time you’re spending at work, and a key way of doing that is cutting out wastage,” she said.

The four-day work week movement is about targeting inefficiencies and reducing time wasted.

Time wasting is costing organisations dearly. For instance:

• Employees say they don’t need to be in nearly one-third of the meetings they attend.
• Non-critical meetings cost US businesses approximately US$25,000 per employee every year.
• Eighty-nine per cent of employees admit to wasting time at work every day.
• Sixty per cent or less of work time is spent productively.

What unproductive businesses are lacking, said Ms Rush, is that critical motivating factor.

Making the most of your free time

When asked what most surprised Ms Rush about the results of the experiment, she answered that it was how employees were choosing to spend their time off.

“Some of us have started our own little side hustles, and so separate work that we’re really interested in,” said Ms Rush.

“Some have taken up new hobbies. Our CEO took up golf, for example. While others like to use it to do life admin: cleaning the house and things like that so that you can really enjoy your weekend.”

Key takeaways

1. Involve employees in the design of the four-day week.
2. Use it as a productivity incentive, not a three-day weekend.
3. Regularly check in with employees at all levels.
4. Build a guilt-free culture.
5. Run a trial and set metrics.

“We see the four-day week as one of the biggest changes in the way that people are working that’s going to help them live better lives and also enjoy their work a lot more,” said Ms Rush.

To learn more about the research behind the four-day work week, visit the 4 Day Week Global webpage here.