Skiving or Thriving: The 4 Day Work Week #46

After all, all art is experience. Hello and welcome to The Company Doctor. As global success stories from the pilots and trials of the 4-day working week continue to appear in the news, Gary and I are discussing the pros and cons of this potential new way of working, what it could mean for employees and business owners. This is Skiving or Thriving? The Great 4-Day Week Debate.

Gary, hello! Hey George, an impromptu podcast episode.

Yeah, an unusually impromptu episode, but an exciting one nonetheless. It's a hot— another hot topic.

Yeah, we're tuned in, aren't we? We're so tuned in. The world's talking 4-day week, and actually I wasn't going to work today, so— right, okay, ironically.

But hey, you've already adopted the 4-day week.

I'm already doing 4 days.

Yeah. Yeah, it is a hot topic and it's in the headlines a lot at the moment because we've seen that a lot of companies who adopted it as a sort of trial on a trial basis are now saying we're going to continue it because we've seen so many benefits and this, that and the other. Before we launch into maybe the pros and cons of it, what are your initial thoughts on it?

Well, my first thought was it's just long enough for me to forget all my passwords.

Yeah.

Sorry, that's nothing to do with this. It just— I was on the phone to someone the other day and they asked me my password and I thought, I thought, you know what, I think my life, I need an extra day just to remember all my passwords. Sorry, that was a bit flippant of me. I've kind of thought about this because, you know, in preparation for this discussion, it's kind of related to the future of work. Apparently, 100 years ago, I mean, I don't really remember it, although I'm getting old, they only just moved to the 5-day week because they used to work 7 days.

Right, interesting.

And I say they, people. Yeah, so I mean, it's not, it sounds a bit radical, but actually, why do you go to work anyway? Apart from money, obviously. Why do you go to work? And I think that's, that's part of the debate. And then maybe that kind of forms the discussion. It's like, apart from money, why'd you go to work?

Yeah, yeah.

I think the pandemic's got us to look at life a little bit differently. It's a bit of a catalyst, wasn't it, for— if you think about hospitality, I think, um, you know, one of the reasons there's a massive shortage in hospitality, amongst other things, is a lot of people were doing really hard stuff in hospitality, not getting paid very much for it, being shouted at and thought, you know what, there's better things in life to go and do.

Yeah. And now we're struggling.

Yeah. Now we're struggling.

Can't get a pint anywhere. Yeah. Which is a disaster.

Or a Scotch egg.

Which is even worse. I read on a BBC story that in 2022, last year, of a trial of 70 firms, 86% of companies said the 4-day week was such a success that they plan to keep it in place after the pilot ended. They cited benefits such as increased productivity and significant financial savings for employees on things like transport and, and childcare. So surely it's a no-brainer. I mean, I'm trying to get your yes or no answer here, but you hear something like that and surely you think, yeah, let's, let's just do it. What's, what's holding us back?

Well, it's interesting. And not only that's the UK pilot, but actually there's a, there's a global pilot. So if you know that the 4-Day Week Global Group Right. And the stats of this— I've been printing off the stats because I'm a bit weird like that, and it's quite incredible. It's literally every single country that's done this, and it's been going for 6 months since June last year, have had very similar results. So I'm gonna— I'm not gonna answer the question yet because I want to talk about a bit more. I do have a polarizing thought, as you'd expect. Of course, I genuinely do. But interesting enough, out of that those thousands of people that did it, as you said, majority of those organizations said that they would carry on doing it. So there's something going on in there. But what I was interested in, again, I'm not avoiding your question, was what does it do to the business itself?

Yeah.

Is it better or is it worse?

Yeah. Well, I guess that is that what's, what's holding business owners back from adopting it? So those people, I'm sure that there are many who would say, listen, we're just not going to do that. What do you think of their fears? Is it a financial thing? Is it a listen, no one's going to get the work done? What are the sort of worries that face business owners who might refuse to adopt this given the choice?

Yeah, that's a good question. Well, the exam question before you get to that is can companies boost productivity by 25% on the days they've got left? Because that's really what it means.

Yeah.

And I guess the fears are, yeah, will I still make my money? This work from home thing, I still have not got my head around that and So does that mean it's just another jolly? You know, people are working from home, playing on the PlayStations in some people's minds. Not obviously, I don't think that. And, you know, we're just going to give them another day. It's sort of counterintuitive, isn't it? If I'm in an operations role, you know, will anyone actually answer the phone? Can everyone be off? And, you know, would it affect my revenue? Will I make more money or less money? And I think that's what we should dig into because some of the stats are quite surprising, actually. Yeah. So results of that because those, those questions are answered. So If you are part of that pilot that each country had to do, the exam questions are followed through in the same way. So it's productivity, happiness at work, sick leave, revenue growth or decline, customer sat, and sickness. Yeah. And one of the biggest ones that really kind of surprised me, probably shouldn't have surprised me, was that through the pilot there was a 65% reduction in sick days.

Hmm. I saw a similar thing.

So, you know, that when you translate that into cost, it's almost like people are having 4 days a week anyway, right?

Yeah. I think a lot of people are, you know, through sickness or through, you know, just working for a flexible company. A lot of people are just doing 4 days a week already. A lot of people that I work with only do 4 days a week. That's just part of their sort of contract, I guess.

Yeah.

So it is— there is a case for saying that it's already, it's already happening and everyone else just needs to catch up.

So let's look at the revenue bit because I think the people are listening a lot on their mind is, well, what does it do to the business overall? And interesting enough, I've looked at different countries. If we take the UK, the revenue for the UK over that 6-month period— so bear in mind you can't completely equate it to the experiment— was, was +1.4%. Okay. It didn't decline. Yeah. It improved a little bit. You can't, you know, is it really because of the pilot? I don't know. Maybe it looks like it, but when you look at other countries, it was much higher. It never went in any country, it never went down. So the revenue never declined. So from a company point of view, that was good.

Yeah.

The biggest benefit seemed to be around employee engagement and satisfaction. So less people leaving. Less people off sick, people generally happier at work. I mean, yeah, someone always said to me, what's your ideal scenario at work? And it's 6 Saturdays and a Sunday would be quite nice.

That would be nice.

So it's not far off that. So it's like, you know, they chose their weekend. So like the way it works is you don't reduce the number of hours. Yeah. Otherwise it kind of gets lost. It's not exciting. You take the day. Most companies have extended the day actually by half an hour. They've made it till 5:30 or something like that instead of 5. 9 to 5:30, but they've taken— they're given the choice to take Monday or Friday off. Yeah. And then there are issues. Everyone says there are issues because obviously you've got to have— people have to be flexible and be willing to now and then take a call or whatever.

And it's a trust thing as well, isn't it? I mean, I think it's difficult to argue if you see revenue is not declining, if anything, it's actually potentially growing and people are happier at work. You know, it's hard to argue with that. But there's this fundamental trust thing, I think, among business owners, which will sort of just stop them from letting this happen because they, as you say, they think people are just going to take advantage.

Yeah, obviously the answer is people will. But, but what's been really interesting to me because I've been thinking through it again, you know, I always equate everything to being a consultant, which is probably wrong, but it's very interesting. One of the things that, that comes out a lot in this, in this experiment is you can't work the same way to get that 25%. You're losing 25% of your time. So you just can't work the same way, and if you did, it's not going to work. So you've got to do things differently. And we are on a mission this year, aren't we, on our podcast to talk about the future of work. And that's been driven by some of the response during the pandemic that there must be a better way. But the— so if I look through the lens of a consultant and with that mind of you've got to do something differently, otherwise it's not going to work. As a consultant, I do that. So if I'm working on a customer, I work on multiple customers at once. I never work 5 days for one customer. There's a real benefit to that because it makes me— I need to get things done. Yeah. So I've got this kind of deadline. I don't do things that are wasteful unless I really have to. And I think this is what happens at work. You know, people— no disrespect, but people generally fill their days, right?

Yeah. Well, that's it. You got people who finish at 5:30 or 6:00 and they may finish their tasks for the day at 4:00, but because it's sort of so ingrained, you know, that you don't go before the boss, right? Yeah. You just sit there watching the clock and twiddling your thumbs for a couple of hours and that's not productive.

Well, they may not even be doing that, but you know, they'll fill their day, they'll do stuff that's probably fine. But again, is it going to move the dial? I don't know. Right. And I think that that's what has happened during this experiment. So if you want to do things differently, that forces you to plan better. Yeah. It forces you to reduce meetings. Do I need to have that meeting? I used to work for a small company where the boss was paranoid about why are you having a meeting, wasting my money, wasting my time, which wasn't very nice, but I got the message. Yeah. Can you reduce meetings and the time? Do you have to have the Microsoft 1-hour meeting or can you have a 20-minute or 15-minute meeting? Like we're doing a reduced podcast. We don't have to do an hour podcast. Yeah. Can you prioritize harder? Can you have less waste? And can you focus on what's important and get things done? I think, you know, as a consultant, you have to do that. And therefore you are much more productive because you have to be, and then it becomes part of your DNA. Yeah. The example I've given before is when I'm about to go on holiday, which I am, then again, people can say that, I get bloody organized about the time I'm about to go away, cause I need to make sure that it's not a mess when I come back. But as a consultant, I do that every day. Yeah. So I think if you're going to, if you're going to do this, I think you have to change the way you work. What do you think?

I agree. And I think it will actually make people better at prioritizing things because I think you'll have to, otherwise you'll fall behind. So I think that in that respect is also a good thing because yeah, it'll force people to reevaluate the way that they work to make it more efficient. And you're sort of doing it because you know that there's a reward as a result of it. You know, you're getting an extra day. To yourself. But then I suppose on the flip side of that, from a sort of, from your perspective and looking through your lens, you do a lot of presentations and talks and work in groups and things at big companies, you know, with all this flexible working and, you know, potential 4 days and some people having a Monday and some people having a Friday. Is there not a situation where you turn up to give one of your life-changing presentations and it's like, oh, well, this person doesn't work on a Monday and this person is only does a half day. I mean, does that start to sort of wear, or do you not care? Do you think this, I'm going to turn up and do my thing anyway?

I do. I think everyone needs to do the same day personally. Because I think there's some roles where you can't, if you're in operations or in a call center or something, it might not work.

Right.

But, but I think, yeah, I do. There is an issue. There's a downside to doing this anyway. We know customer, customer sat could be an issue. It hasn't been. Yeah. Most people have done this have said it's tricky. Yeah, you need to get used to it and you have to be flexible and it's not clean. But I think you're right. You know, you, you had that when you started a new job and even the Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday thing is a problem, right? Because some people are in different days.

Yeah.

And that is not conducive to teaming. I actually think if you do do a 4-day week, you need to spend most of the rest of the time in the office, which is slightly controversial to say, because otherwise, no, because if you can increase collaboration and prioritize them, change the way you work, then I think there's definitely something in it. You know, I'm part of a small business and, you know, I think there's something in it. It needs to be looked at. I think that there's an angle there and I can see why it works. I can see why it doesn't work as well. But it's not everyone's going to, not everyone's going to have the same thought process. Some people will skive off and, you know, just use it as an excuse. But, but you have to trust people that they start from a good place.

Yeah, I agree. And there has to be some framework of of organization and regulation if you do it, because as you say, otherwise, I mean, people might be amazed to learn that this podcast isn't my full-time job.

I'm also— yeah, you're like a natural. I know.

I work in media and in media it's come to the— it's got to a situation where on Fridays no one's working already. So all the agencies that you need to contact, all the clients that you need to get sign-off from, all this sort of stuff, you know, and this is in broadcast media, but they're not working at all.

They're just working from home.

Not working. They're off and they're certainly not in the office. So if you want to have, you know, the days where you used to have lunches and networking events on a Friday, that just doesn't happen anymore. But I do work on a Friday and therefore if I need to get something signed off or if I need to run, you know, if I need to sign something off for someone else or whatever it may be, I can't do that. I can't do any sort of collaborative work on a Friday already because not enough people are working and I'm not sort of saying, oh God, I'm so great and I work so hard.

You are pretty great. And by the way, you're— I didn't know this wasn't your full-time job. You're so good good at this. It's funny, um, surprise, a lot of people say to me, it's such a great podcast and you're great, Gary, but George, he's fantastic.

It must be because he does it full time, but I don't—

so good. No, you are genuinely so good. Um, yeah, I agree. I think it— well, maybe you should run around the desk and sign your own paperwork or something. I might have to get anyone else to do anything there. Yeah, I guess that is the way it's going. And is it, is it a bad thing? Apparently, again, in the results, 7 out of 10 people had lower levels of burnout. 7 out of 10, 70% of people had lower burnout. Isn't it good just for that?

Yeah, there are loads of— I think I would say there are stronger personal reasons for than against, as in, as in from a, from a human level, everyone's lives will be made nicer, definitely. But will we be a productive nation? I don't know.

I guess the question is, why do you go to work? Yeah. Um, if a good example is in France, I have a 35-hour week. I used to have a guy that worked for me, he, he moved departments and came to work for me. He had 67 days annual leave and he was allowed to keep them. Wow. I said to him, okay, why don't you just take the rest of the year off, mate? But you could—

they could bank them.

But interesting enough, there was a problem in France in the company I worked in where people— there was a higher rate of suicide in the company above the average because you do get it, unfortunately. Yeah, but it was because of self-esteem, you know, although people working 35-hour week and you couldn't get fired and all that kind of stuff. People come to work because they want to have purpose, right?

Yeah, often money. Yeah, for sure.

And therefore, what is it that you do and how do you do it? When you get— people get to retirement age, they're all excited about retirement because then they can be their own person. Then some people are bored because they've got no purpose.

Yeah, people are terrified of retirement, a lot of people.

And the death rate is higher after you've retired than when you're working under stress. So You know, there's a balance in there. But I do, you know, again, thinking about the future ways of future ways of working. I mean, what do you think? Do you think, you know, moving to a different way of working, like 100 years ago we moved to 5 days. Do you think it was time for us to move on to the 4 days?

Yeah, I don't think it should be ruled out just because it's new and challenging. And obviously strategically it would be such a logistical and strategic undertaking that it is understandable that people are worried about it and wary of doing it themselves. But I think having read up briefly on all the psychological benefits and well-being and all that sort of stuff, I don't think you can rule it out. But it's also— it's not going to be very inclusive in that people like teachers and nurses probably, you know, and as you said, hospitality workers, it doesn't apply to them. Teachers especially couldn't suddenly say, right, I'm only going to work 4 days a week.

Yeah, so you can't get a Scotch egg on a Friday.

Exactly. And where the hell are we going to be when we can't get Scotch egg on a Friday?

Or a pint of lager.

Or a science lesson. My 3 favourite things. So yeah, so I think it doesn't include everybody. And I think, you know, would people, prospective teachers, be put off? Would they sort of think, actually, I'm not going to become a teacher because I quite like this idea of doing a 4-day week?

But can you have it as a shift? So you work 4 days, but someone else works a different 4 days and it overlaps.

I'm sure that, yeah, I'm sure that that's what they will do.

Maybe there's not enough people to go around, I guess, to do that.

Yeah. But there are lots of these little questions that would have to be ironed out. But I suppose it's the same with any sort of major shift. It was the same and still is the same with something like Brexit, which is a massive national logistical undertaking. I'm not saying I'm not comparing the two at all, but I'm just saying that when there are these sorts of big changes, you're going to encounter bumps along the way. But also, I mean, it's just, it's never going to be enforced, is it? No, I don't think the government's never going to say it's now a 4-day week.

Although there was a time in the— I mean, you're too young to know this, but there was a time in the '70s where the they were going to enforce a 4-day week. All right. It's just the state of the economy and everything that was going on at the moment at that time. But you're right, it's not going to be a global— I don't think it's going to be a global edict. But if you were— if you were a kind of— and by the way, in the pilot, it was different sized companies from the very small to the very large, and it worked for all of them. Right. So, yeah, but you're right, there's some sectors where it definitely doesn't work or some roles. Do you think that if people could do it and are up for it, they should just go and try it?

Yeah, I think so. Well, as companies, you mean? Yeah, yeah. I think that there's, there's been enough data, data, data that big companies, small companies shouldn't be nervous of at least trying it. The danger of that is it's a bit like a genie in a bottle in that once you give people, you know, 6 months of 4-day week, can you then be like, oh, sorry guys, that hasn't worked out, back to 5 days?

You think that's why the, why the, what is it, 60 or 90, 92% of companies want to keep it? Possibly. They can't put it back in the bottle.

They might not be able to put it back in the bottle. They might not want to admit to the fact that they were wrong about it.

I don't know.

That's a bit of a cynical way of looking at it, but possibly, possibly. I mean, when you were— because you were high-flying at places like AT&T and NCR back in the day. No, I was going to say back in those days. It wasn't that long ago.

No, it was a long time ago, to be honest.

If this sort of thing had been proposed then, I know we're in a different time now, but surely it just— it would have been laughed out the door.

Well, yeah, it's all about time, isn't it? I mean, again, before the pandemic, you know, the idea of everyone working from home was an impossibility. So I think we're in different times. But I guess in a big company you go across more functions. So within those teams you're going to have people that are, you know, doing operational roles that are 24/7 cover. You know, there's going to be situations where it's difficult and then you're in the dilemma of giving to someone, not to others. So yeah. Bigger company, but even the small companies, they cover operational activity. But it would be interesting to dig in and find out what they did. There's a lot of case studies now from the experiment. There's 3,000 companies, or 3,000 employees, sorry, in 70 organizations. And that's just in the UK. So I think it's worth digging into. I'm going to. This was our dinner chat over the weekend, wasn't it? It's like, why don't we talk about it?

Because we're talking about it.

Yeah. And I've still forgotten my passwords.

That doesn't help.

Here's another thought. Just, I know you've got a big question coming. What about the— isn't there a smaller carbon footprint working less days?

Look at that.

I'm so now, aren't I?

That's so now, as in, in terms of transport and people not going into the office and reduced amount of energy.

What happened during the pandemic where people were sitting at home and they can see the stars for a change?

Yeah, that's, I mean, that's the thing. It's another, you know, people's mental well-being, mental health, the, you know, carbon footprint. There are lots of really wonderful benefits, but I just think business owners are going to be like, well, am I going to lose money? That's— I mean, I think that's, that's the—

that's a fair question to ask, isn't it? The experiment so far says no, but is this— is it too small? Is it too soon?

I think you need to look at— it needs to be a couple of years, doesn't it? I don't think 6 months is enough to, to judge, personally, I would say. When does it end? Because people that I know who are currently working 4 days a week Are they doing it? I'm sure that they're doing it because it's convenient to their lifestyle and their way of life. If everyone suddenly goes down to a 4-day week, are they going down to a 3-day week? Do they sort of— does it shuffle along that way?

Well, it took 100 years to get to 5 days, so probably not.

No, probably not. And then there's things like holidays. You know, if you work 5 days a week, you're entitled to 28 days holiday. If you work 4 days a week, should everyone have a reduced amount of holiday?

Yeah, well, in one of the big surveys that was done, they asked people if they would take a pay cut. And it's interesting because I looked at the threshold for taking a pay cut and the majority of people would take a slight pay cut to get the time off.

Right.

That's interesting. Only a slight one, but they would. And the demographics were pretty much the same, you know, depending on their age or sex. It was, it was pretty much the same. Yeah. But, but on the majority of cases, what companies have done, they've extended the day a little bit and, and taken off one day. I think one, you know, as you said earlier, having the same day for everyone is probably easy at one level and more difficult for customer sat.

The pay cut thing is interesting because it sort of forces you to evaluate what's your threshold.

Yeah.

What's your threshold and what do you value more, money or time?

Yeah. Or if you have the choice, would you, would you, would you dob in some money to get a bit more time?

Yeah. Don't know. Tough questions.

Well, some companies do that now where they have, you know, you have these flexible rewards where you can get, get some dental care or get more time off or whatever else you do.

Yeah.

You have the teeth fixed or you can go on holiday.

Yeah. Either. Both good. Both needed. I was going to— I've got two questions for you. One's for advice and one is for your own insight. So you're a small— well, you're not small. You're a business owner. You mentioned it was a small business earlier and you have employees, etc. Is this something— and they may be listening and they may be interested. That's what I'm worried about now.

I'm worried about this question.

But, you know, this is this is not binding, but is this something that you would consider at some point in the near or distant future trialing or looking into?

I would definitely talk to our business partners about it and look into it because I think that there's something in it. I know as a consultant that you can be more productive and more happy if you change the way you work. I think changing— the trick and the key is changing the way that you work. Yeah. And, you know, a lot of business consultants out there, or there's lots of organizations that help customers with business problems, but not a lot of people focus on changing the way that you work. They do it in a kind of process way, but this is more, more fundamental. So long answer is I think it's worth lifting the covers and digging into because I think there's something in it.

Yeah, nice. That's good to hear. And finally, because we're doing— even though this hasn't really been a short podcast, it's about the same— it's an advice question, and it's what advice would you give employers or business owners who are not facing pressure but are sort of beginning to get the rumblings that this is something that their employees or the wider society might expect them to adopt, how would you advise them to approach it in terms of dealing with their employees and the sort of the strategy and all that sort of thing? It's a big question, but—

It's a big question, but I think it's the same as anything really. You've got to be informed. And interesting enough, in this debate, we've been more positive than negative. I don't know if that's because we just like the idea of it. We're not going to do anything about that. But hey, but any decision, you need to be informed to make a decision. And thankfully, because there's been these global pilots, there's a lot of data. I didn't realize, I just thought it was the UK that was doing it. When you look at— there's something called the 4-Day Week Global Group. There's a detailed version of the stats for those of you who can't sleep at night. I downloaded it and I'm still looking at it, but it goes into— it talks about the whole pilot, it talks about the questions that needed to be answered., you know, what do we make money, what's the productivity, you know, all the stuff, you know, how do we work with the different days. It goes through all of that and then it shows the results from the employee and the employer's perspective and it splits demographics and all that kind of stuff. And so, you know, there's some data to look at and you say, is 6 months enough? I don't know, probably not. And then it's a good debating point to be had in a team meeting or something like that. Not to say we're going to do it, but having this debate, I don't know, we're having the debate because Yeah, you and I had a little chat the other day and we thought, you know, this is topical, it's come up a lot. Why don't we have a chat about it on the podcast? Yeah. Boom. Here we are talking about it. And we've done it.

And I think there's enough there for, to spark further debate and further conversation. It is a hot topic. And I think we can do a few more of these sort of slightly more informal discussions around topics of the day.

Do you think we should do takeaways on a short takeaway?

If you have takeaways, by all means.

I probably don't, but I just thought I'd ask you, put you on the spot. I did have a couple. I think benefits look like, and I don't know for sure, better employee engagement, potentially a smaller carbon footprint, increased productivity, and some equality in the workplace. What we haven't spoken about is it provides the opportunity for people to do things that a bit of a work-life balance they couldn't do and therefore can't work because of. Yeah. On the downside. Not having that consistency of where people are going to be in, like you mentioned before, how you deal with situations where you can't give it to everybody because their role is like teachers or someone in operations or something to that effect. And the whole customer sat point I haven't dug into enough. Does it affect customer satisfaction? And apparently it's demotivating if you ask people to work less hours rather than less days, which is kind of interesting. Yeah, don't shorten their day and make up the extra day across 5 is more demoralizing than going, I've got a weekend coming and it happens to be Thursday night. Yeah. So they're not takeaways, but they're kind of my pluses and minuses. You asked me at the beginning, am I for or against? And my answer is I'm more for than against, but I'm not completely informed. But I love digging into it and I love change. And if there's a better way to work, the future of work needs to change. This may be one of those pieces of the jigsaw. I'm sure there's plenty of others.

Great, great stuff.

You're great, George.

Well, thank you very much, Gary. And then we've got, we've got episodes about navigating change, and we've got episodes about side hustles, if your extra day a week means that you are going to start a side hustle. So do dip back into the back catalog of our previous episodes. Love the plug. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you, Gary. And I'm going to go and use my day off to play my PlayStation. Thank you all for listening.

And I'm going to go and remember my passwords. Thank you. Have a good day.

Thanks for listening to this episode of The Company Doctor. For video clips, show notes, and soundbites from today's show, plus our glorious back catalog of insightful episodes, visit thecompanydoctor.com, where you can also subscribe to this podcast.