Want to switch to a 4-day work week but not sure where to start?
You’ve heard about all the stats around how it can help improve productivity (by up to 40%, according to Microsoft) or that it helps attract or retain talent (63% of managers said this, according to Henley Business School).
But you’re still not sure how a 4-day working week will work for your business, and you know there is probably a lot to consider and plan for before you make the switch.
That’s why within this post, we’re going to cover everything from what it is to what you need to consider before switching.
So if you were toying with the idea of switching before but were worried about being a little underprepared – you should feel a little less nervous by the end of this.
What Is The 4-Day Work Week, And How Does It Work?
A 4-day work week is exactly what it sounds like – an employer letting their staff only work 4 days for the same pay they’re currently on.
What this looks like can differ from business to business.
Some will compress a 5-day week into a 4-day week by allowing staff to work the extra hours to have an extra day off.
Or some will allow them to work fewer hours and have an extra day for free.
What Are The Benefits Of A 4-Day Work Week?
There are plenty of benefits to giving your employees an extra day to themselves.. Some of the biggest benefits are:
Employee wellbeing improves
A New Zealand-based company trialled a four-day workweek and found along with increased job satisfaction, employees were 45%-38% less stressed.
With stress having a significant impact on people’s happiness, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see how significant an impact that could have on the wellbeing of employees.
Then if you factor in happy employees usually means good and productive employees, you can start to quickly see the benefits of a 4-day working week.
Helps retain top talent
Having a 4-day week could be the thing that helps keep them around. In fact, it’s such a massive perk that 4 Day Week Global said 63% of businesses had better employee retention when operating a 4-day week.
That’s not something to be sniffed at.
Especially when considering how much cost goes into recruiting and developing your team. So if you can hold onto more of your top talent, then you’re saving a small fortune as a business.
Reduces operating costs
We all know how expensive energy bills are getting. A small business’s energy bill typically costs £15,000 – £35,000 per year for electricity alone.
So if you’re removing a 5th of these costs, it will add up nicely and help your organisation save a potentially huge sum.
What Are The Drawbacks Of A Four-Day Work Week?
Your employees could struggle to compress their work into 4 days.
If they’re struggling to complete their work in a 40-hour week, it’s going to be a whole lot harder in a 32-hour week.
So unless they find some efficiencies, the end result could be a very burnt-out and stressed team.
It doesn’t work for every business model
Many businesses require their employees to be online and operational at all times during the week, which means a 4-day work week would not be practical.
Customer service companies, for example, may need to respond to customer queries at any time. So, customer queries could be missed when employees are out of the office. This does not look good for the business and could be detrimental to its reputation.
What Do Employers Need To Consider Before Transitioning To 4 Days?
Seek legal advice from an employment solicitor
It is important to seek legal advice for anything within an organisation that may affect the employees or customers/clients such as:
- Employee hours
- Client work agreements
- Customer service agreements
A solicitor will be able to advise on the best approach and supply you with the necessary information to progress with the change.
Consider the financial impact reduced hours could have
It is important to understand how a 4-day work week will impact the company finances and what areas you will need to pay attention to during the transition period.
Some important points to check are:
- What’s the impact on clients/customers: Is there a likely impact on service levels and if that drops what’s the impact of revenue? Does this change the service level agreements with customers and does that mean potentially lower fees?
- What’s the impact on recruitment: Is there a saving to be had if recruitment fees drop?
- Office requirements: Depending on how you operate the 4-day week, does that change the requirements for your office?
- Bills and utilities: What’s the potential saving in bills?
You should seek financial advice as well as forecast the potential impacts of switching to make sure you’re properly weighing up the pros and cons.
Do you have coverage for all departments during the week?
Before changing to a 4-day week, you must ensure all departments are covered.
Staggering days off is one way to manage this, so you could offer one group Friday off, and the others have Monday off.
Do you need a trial?
A trial period will help to establish which format works best for the organisation and get feedback from employees.
A month’s trial for the whole team, where they report back after each week, would be ideal to see the impact. You could also support qualitative feedback from employees with collaboration analytics data, for example with insight into whether your teams are genuinely able to disconnect for that fifth day, or sentiment.
This would allow you to spot any of the potential issues that could arise during a 4-day work week and plan ahead to remove these problems.
Summary
A 4-day work week can have many benefits for your business.
But before you make the switch, you need to understand the impacts it will have on your business.
So thorough planning is required to ensure the transition to a shorter week causes little disruption to the day-to-day running of the business.
To make sure you thoroughly prepare, you need to:
- Seek legal advice
- Conduct a trial period
- Consider all the effects the change will have on the business before converting, both in terms of qualitative input from staff and collaboration analytics data.
