Frequently Asked Questions About The Four-Day Week

Late last year I got in touch with the Four Day Week Campaign about our new shorter working policy at streamGo, and we’ve been in dialogue with Joe O'Connor, the pilot programme manager, since.

Everyone involved has been incredibly helpful in terms of passing on their knowledge, information about the UK trial, and actually, even just by promoting us on their social media channels, I’ve had quite a few conversations with other businesses around their four-day week plans.

It’s been great from a networking point of view and being able to learn from and help other organisations working through the same challenges.

I thought I’d pool together all that information into a FAQ post for LinkedIn so that anyone can benefit from the conversations I’ve had so far. Hope you find it helpful.

Why four days?

If you look at the late 1800s, six and even seven day working was fairly commonplace, so I imagine at the time the idea of even a five-day work week was seen as quite controversial in the same way a four-day week is now.

Fundamentally we think there’s a better way to work that has an emphasis on business outcomes instead of presenteeism.

Our Managing Director Richard Lee has been working a four-day-week for a number of years now. Other employees also chose to work four days to support their work/life balance.

So in some respects, we’ve trialled this in small pockets, we know how much of a positive impact it can have on wellbeing in particular, and we’re now looking to roll that out further across the whole business.

The reason why an initial trial is so important is to see what the impact is on both sides, to understand the benefits and challenges (in the same way we have benefits and challenges around five day working), and I think as businesses, to say to employees: look, we care enough about your wellbeing and work-life balance to want to give this a go.

How are you approaching the trial?

We’re taking a sensible and phased approach to this – so late last year we moved down to a 32-hour, 4.5 day week, closing on a Friday afternoon as that was our quietest period for clients. They don’t typically want a large amount of events late on a Friday.

And now as we start the new year we’re working through our plans for a pure 4 day week, which we’re looking to roll out in the coming months.

What we’ve not yet experienced is 32 hours at our busiest period and what impact that has on us. It’s something we’ll be seeing in the next month or two as we ramp up to a typically busy spring and summer events season.

How will you measure it? Won’t it cost businesses money?

When people say a four-day week will cost businesses money, they’re assuming that employers don’t benefit from this, and I think really the only way the four-day week movement will work is if employers see that it’s mutually beneficial.

We’re taking the 100:80:100 approach that we pay 100% of your salary for 80% of your time as long as productivity and business outcomes remain at 100% or there abouts.

You’ve got to think about other metrics too though.

One area that's underestimated when looking at from an employer perspective is the hidden costs associated with employee wellbeing and productivity.

So what’s the benefit of happy, engaged and motivated employees?

They’re going to be producing a higher quality of work, they’re going to look after clients and customers better, they’re likely to take fewer sick days…

And ultimately if you’re an organisation offering a really revolutionary policy like a four day week you’re going to attract and retain the best talent, so you’re going to reduce your costs on hiring fees.

Lastly, we’re a very environmentally conscious business – our events platform reduces the carbon footprint of brands by allowing delegates to attend events virtually rather than travelling.

So a reduced carbon footprint was another factor – and research has shown that a four-day week could reduce the UK's carbon footprint by 127 million tonnes per year, the equivalent to taking 27 million cars off the road (effectively the entire UK private car fleet).

It’s not going to work for every industry though, is it? 

I think that’s something that should and I suspect will be addressed as part of the trial, and I can only speak to my own experience and the industry I work in really. But if you look at Iceland’s four-day week trial as an example, which involved a whole range of workplaces including hospitals, preschools, offices, social service providers, they described it as an overwhelming success.

And what I would say is that I don’t think it’s going to be a one-size-fits all approach, much like the five-day week isn’t a one-size-fits all approach – some people work weekends, others don’t, you have shift work, 9-5, part-time and full-time work…

So whether you’re working five days or four days, I’m confident businesses and industries can find a way to adapt to that model if they want to make it work.

Will you work the same amount of hours?

That's up to you I suppose! Is your model going to be the same amount of hours in fewer days, or are you reducing the amount of hours your team work?

I think for companies already operating at 32-34 hours, it's possible to work the same hours in four days instead of five.

For companies working 34-40 hours a week, clearly that would be very difficult and you could see how employees may feel extra stressed during their four days in the office.

We've taken the decision to reduce the amount of hours our team works, initially from 35 to 32 hours, then we'll look to move down to 28 hours.

How can I do five days of work in four?

This is similar to the last question but specifically for companies looking to reduce hours.

I think something we do very well at streamGo is thinking critically about how time is spent during work hours.

Take meetings as an example – for some employees in certain companies, attending meeting after meeting is almost their job, but we encourage everyone to really think about:

a) whether they’re needed in a meeting or another member of that team attending can relay the key actions

b) whether that meeting could be an email or a quick phone call vs a group of people in a room, and…

c) you might only be needed in that meeting for 10 minutes, vs the hour that the meeting is planned in for – so we encourage people to excuse themselves once their area’s been covered so they can focus on their priorities that day

Another thing I’ve personally found quite useful is that when I work on a task that is either monotonous or is quite admin-heavy, I make a note of it because that’s something I can probably automate at some point or potentially even eliminate from my role if it’s not adding the right value.

All these little things can easily make up a half-day or full day over the course of a week.

Would you just close on a Friday?

I think there’s a misconception that four-day working means shutting down the economy on a Thursday night and that’s absolutely not the case, in the same way that millions of people in this country work weekends now.

One option is to roll out a rota system as part of your scheme which can help cover for busy periods and make sure from a customer service perspective you always have people available for clients.

I think there needs to be some flexibility on both sides – so if our clients want to do an event on a Friday or even a weekend, we’d always accommodate that but make sure our production and delivery teams can take the time back.

For the most part, we want our employees to be working four days with an extended weekend and no more than that, because that’s the only way we’ll know that this policy works.

How do employees feel about it?

Naturally there’s a lot of excitement from our employees around the scheme, but also from all of the senior leadership team and our MD Rich is really behind the move.  

What’s been really nice is hearing how people are going to spend that extra time.

Many employees told us they’d be spending more time with their family and friends which was great to hear.

One person said they were planning to learn Spanish, another member of our team is going to grow their Etsy craft business.

I think the key thing from our point of view is that they spend their time in a way that ultimately improves mental well-being, happiness, and work/life balance.

One thing we made sure to do is get our comms right in terms of answering questions our employees might have in respect to any changes to pay or benefits – or from a client perspective, anything they need to know about access to our team (which hasn’t and won’t change at all).

We’ve got a really great, conscientious team here at streamGo and I think we all understand it’ll only work if it works for everyone including the business.

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If you’re thinking of moving to a four-day week hopefully you find this useful, and if there are questions I’ve not covered feel free to add them below.