Should You Switch to a 4 Day (10 Hour) Work Week?! (Pros VS Cons)

Hey everyone, it's Mike Andes from landscapebusinesscourse.com and today I'm talking about whether a four tens schedule is better than working five days a week for eight hours. So recently we actually changed from five days a week where we worked eight hour days to four tens. I'm going to talk about how that came about and why you might consider one or the other, because there's pros and there's cons to both. And you know, I know a lot of people have strong feelings about this. We'll jump right in the comment section. But I think it's a good balance. And, and if you're considering switching, this might be exactly what you need to potentially trial out the opposite way that you were doing it. So I've done five, you know, five eights for a very long time, Very long time. And I think a lot of times the reason people would switch is because they want to avoid overtime. That really didn't have any sort of bearing on my decision. And really what happened is we considered this a few years ago and actually our current office manager lead brought this up to me years ago. It's like, why don't we do the four tens? And it's always been something we've talked about, but always it's just like, look, we're not gonna do it. And there are several reasons why. We'll get into the cons in just a second. And these were the things that kept me from making us where we did 4 10s. But recently what happened is the team brought forward to me a proposal that said, hey, like, here's why we want to do four tens. And they brought up the pros and all the things that I. Most of which I'd already thought about. But when the team brought it forward, that's when they brought it in a really good way. They brought it in a very articulate, they had a well thought plan and well thought, really thought through the ideas of the implications of what a 410 schedule would do. And so I was like, you know what, I have to respect that and we have to at least trial it. So for the time being, we have implemented a 410 schedule at our local shop and we will do that. And our one caveat that we have put in there is that during the spring rush, we're not guaranteeing it because we do not know what that's going to look like in our market when it starts raining and the grass is growing crazy fast. And right now it's kind of the happy medium that we found with the team. But that being said, we know that there's already a couple team members that potentially might not really like the 410s. But again, we're going to look at the pros, the cons today and realize that you gotta eventually decide on one or the other. And there's gonna be pros and there's gonna be cons. There's good, there's gonna be bad. Some people will like it, some people won't. So let's start off why 4 tens is better? What are the pros of having a four day schedule where you're 10 hours per day instead of 5 days a week. So first of all it's more efficient. Cause at the end of the day, if you can work a longer day and only have to start your day four times and only have to unload your equipment for four times, and only have to drive back to your shop four times, and you only have to have four cups of coffee in the morning and get your keys four times in the morning, you basically cut off 20% of waste that revolves around just getting to work, going to and from the shop. And any sort of load up or unload time is reduced by 20% immediately. Cause you go from five times you have to load up your truck or put your trailer on, or unload debris or, or unload your equipment. So it goes from five to four immediately. So it's much more efficient. And typically it's also much more efficient cause you're going to get more revenue per hour on a 10 hour route in comparison to an 8 hour route. So for example, let's say that there is a job and you're gonna work eight hours on the job, but there's 20 minutes of drive time. So 20 minutes there, 20 minutes back, that's 40 minutes out of eight hours. But if I work 10 hours on the job, I still only have a 20 minute drive there and 20 minute drive back. Therefore a greater percentage of my day, about 10% more of my day. My working hours are spent on the job if I work four tens in comparison if I work five eights. So it's more efficient. Much more efficient. Another pro is that you typically will have less call outs because of things like doctor's appointments, or they need to have a parent teachers meeting, or they need to have an appointment with their account, or they need to do their taxes or they need to go vote or whatever it is. You have one less reason that they can call out and that is because they have a business day to actually get stuff done. So if they need to go to the bank and sign a loan or they need to go do a deposit, whatever it is, at the bank or any other place of business that is only open during business hours Monday through Friday, they don't have the excuse of I need to call out today because I need to go to the bank at 12 o' clock for an appointment and sign for a car loan or whatever. It might be so much more efficient because you're gonna have less call outs since there is one business day, the Friday typically that you're gonna have off and allow them to go and get those appointments done. Another pro of fourtens is that you have equipment maintenance where you can have someone that comes in on a Friday and all of the equipment is sitting there. They don't have to come before or after work to work on equipment that is otherwise needed in the field. All the trucks, all the equipment is sitting there on a Friday and that person can come and still not be on the weekends and get work done on the equipment without having to have them come on Saturday or Sunday and without them having to come early morning or late evening because the equipment is otherwise out in the field working. So here's some of the reasons why a 4, 4 tens might not work for you, why you might wanna stick with five eights, and why in the past I have not switched to 4 tens sooner. Because from a business standpoint, 4 tens makes more money. From an employee standpoint on P4P, they will also make more money. So from a financial standpoint, 4 tens is the better way to go. Here are the reasons why I have not in the past done four tens. And honestly, I told the team and I said, the thing that kills me is when I go by other landscaping companies and they're driving at 7, 8 o' clock at night because you just know they're running behind, the grass is growing fast and they work literally 12, 13 hours and it's 7, 8 o' clock at night and you can just. They have like a thousand mile stair. They've just been working all day long in the sun. And it's just a long, long day. And so that long, long day can lead to burnout. And that's. I don't want people to go home and just be so exhausted, physically, mentally, and just be like, I just can't do this anymore. I don't want them to burn out. I want them to be able to stay working, staying able to provide for their family and not burn out because they're working 10, 12 hours instead of 8 to 10 hours on a long day, it's 10 hours every day and potentially 12 hours if we are running behind in the spring rush, et cetera. And that happens in this business, in this industry, you're not going to have a cookie cutter. Oh, we get off at 4 o'. Clock. If your employees are like that, you need to change the culture because it does not jive well with this type of business. You got to have more flexibility around your hours to get projects done and not leave 30 minutes before it's done and then come back the next day. P4P will fix that, pay for performance, because they will not want to drive back and forth from the shop. It's a waste of time. They don't make extra money. So, you know, burnout though is a real thing if you're working 12 plus hours a day in the heat, in the rain, in the elements at all. Another thing is that I really thought about the most is there are going to be times that employees with spouses or families don't like to get up at 5, 6 o' clock in the morning and they're getting home at 7, 8 o' clock at night and they now missing dinner with their family. They're missing, you know, their kids waking up in the morning because they got to get to work earlier and they're going to be getting back home later and they potentially might not see their kids at all. If their kids are going to school in the morning and then they come back home and they're getting back at seven, eight o' clock at night, by the time they shower, it's like the kids, the kids are in bed and so they don't really have much of an evening or any time to do anything on the evenings. But again, that's only four days out of the week. The positive part is they get three days of no work and plenty of family time. So there's balance there. But again, for a lot of people with families, they don't want to have four days where they don't see their kids because every evening they're working late. So that was a big drawback for me. I wanted a place where I felt like employees could be have families and still have a sustainable lifestyle where they could see their family and not be working so late every single night. They never got to the dinner table. I remember as a kid, for me dinner was a big deal. Family devotions and family dinner was like a big deal and we always had it. And so I think it's good for the kids And I don't want to strip that from my employees meal, give that to their children. So that was in the back of my mind for a long time as well. Also, another reason that 4 10s might not work out is because if someone does call out, an employee does call out, now you're missing out on 10 hours of labor instead of just 8. Could someone call out before because they were sick? Or maybe they did have a car problem, getting started in the morning, or a family emergency? Well, now if they miss one day, you're missing 10 hours of labor instead of eight. Which means your crew that's now working four 10s is probably working four 12s. So it becomes even more important that the team shows up. Because when you have four tens and they miss one day, you've lost 25% efficiency or 25% production on that employee instead of 20% if they were missing one out of five days. So these are some of the things to consider. I don't think there's any right or wrong answer. I think a lot of people have this stance, it's better or best or whatever. I don't think there is. I think for every single place of work, you as the owner have to determine what your standards are, what you feel is important. I think there's a balance. And, and so every single employee's gonna be different. But eventually you have to figure out a schedule. Cause you can't just have everyone doing random schedules. It's too chaotic in this business to try to be running some people on four tens and some people on five eights, and some people on the weekend shift, like we can't do night shift, usually doing landscaping, but like you can't do that because it's so hard to schedule. And the more systematized you can make your scheduling in terms of budgeted hours and predictably being able to schedule out far into the future, you can be much more accurate with your scheduling in terms of times that you give your customers when they accept a job. So scheduling is really important to be able to have that schedule dependable. Either everyone's on four tens or everyone's on five eights. And for now we've made the change. And maybe we're wrong, maybe we'll take it back next year. But for now, we have made the switch to four tens. And our caveat with the team and our agreement is like, hey, look, in the spring rush, this might not work. And if someone does call out on a Monday, guess what? If there, if we, there's overtime, if there's a lot of work on the schedule. You're the first one to be coming in Friday and I think most of them got that. That was understandable. That's fair. In my opinion, if you're gonna really let the team down on the four days you're supposed to show up to work and you have a three day weekend, guess what, you're gonna come in Friday and you're gonna make sure the work gets done. So not everyone else is working 12, 13 hours to make up for the slack that you've created. So hope that was helpful. Just kind of give the pros and the cons and maybe try it out opposite. Maybe you've been doing four tens and your guys are burning out. Maybe switch to five eight. Maybe five eights is just creating where everyone is calling out Mondays because they want a three day weekend. Give them a three day weekend. Just make them work longer. These are things you should talk about with your team though. This is not something that we pushed. This is definitely brought forward from the team. The majority of them wanted it. We said we'd try all it out and it's working well. So I hope that was helpful and maybe you want to try a different way of doing your schedule. I'm Mike Andes. We'll see you tomorrow.