The Four-Day Workweek: How to Make It Work in Your Organization

As cofounder of 4 Day Week Global, Andrew Barnes has a front-row seat to the world’s largest experiment on the effects of scaling back the workweek.

It started with Barnes’s own New Zealand company, Perpetual Guardian, when he wondered whether his staff members could do their jobs better if they worked the equivalent of four days instead of five. It would be crucial, he knew, to still deliver the same output, customer service, and profitability. He landed on what he calls the 100-80-100 rule: “We pay 100% income for 80% time, as long as we get 100% output.”

The trial made global headlines — “We stopped counting when we got over about 14,000” — and Barnes was inundated with requests for advice. He started a not-for-profit organization and began helping companies on their own pilots, providing virtual workshops, mentoring others, and networking opportunities. The results, which now include data from 91 companies and 3,500 workers, have been analyzed by a team of academics.

And those results have been universally positive. “Not only are 90%-plus of employees saying they like the four-day week — and, in fact, they really don’t want to go back — but companies are seeing material benefits in productivity,” Barnes said.

Barnes talked about the experiments and their findings during Work/23, an MIT Sloan Management Review symposium held in May 2023. He wasn’t able to get to all of the questions from attendees during the event, so he answers some of them below. (Questions and answers have been lightly edited for clarity.)

Is there any research comparing a four-day workweek versus five reduced days (at six hours a day, for example)? Do the results suggest that four days is the better way?

Both are viewed by us as four-day weeks! The clickbait is “a four-day week,” but in reality, we talk about reduced hours working — the 100-80-100 rule. The key is that employees get the time off that’s important to them. In my company, we have some people who take a full day off, others who take two half days, and others, often working parents, who work compressed hours five days a week. That schedule helps with child care issues, which a single day off would not address.

How do you measure the success of the four-day workweek from the perspective of employees and teams when it comes to productivity versus company results like revenue?

Obviously, it’s easier to see whether there’s improvement in company results such as profitability and revenue. We often find that people ask how we measure employee productivity. This, of course, raises the question of how productivity is currently being measured. All too often, it quickly becomes clear that many organizations use time as a surrogate for productivity.

Part of our program is helping organizations develop other productivity measures so that improvements can be more clearly assessed. A key part of this is helping employees identify the unproductive parts of their day. Simply eliminating unproductive activity will, by definition, increase productive activity.

I find that much of what fills the time outside of tactical work are personal conversations and relationship-building. Do those things diminish when you move to a four-day week?

No. In fact, the evidence suggests that these improve. By combining policies such as quiet hours (deep work), fewer and shorter meetings, and better social facilities (in our case, a better staff breakout area), we find that staff cohesion and team-building actually increase. By reinforcing that staff members need to work together to allow everyone to achieve the objective of reduced hours of working, there is often more time for these interactions, not less.

Gallup’s U.S. panel data from 2020 shows that employees who work four days per week have higher well-being than those who work five or six days. However, Gallup’s data also shows that the percentage who are actively disengaged rises among those who work fewer days. Gallup says that employees who already feel disconnected from their employer are likely to drift even further away. What do you advise companies to do to address this?

In the context of a society where many employees work from home and are therefore separated from the usual workplace culture, the impact of reduced hours working is actually minimal. It is also necessary to differentiate between the old style of four-day-week working (where only a few worked four days and most worked five, often with the former receiving lower pay) and the new model, where everyone works a reduced schedule with no reduction in pay. Companies in our trials report significant increases in engagement scores. In the case of our own company, scores increased by 40% — to levels the researchers said were the highest they had ever seen in New Zealand.

What differences do you see in the effects of the four-day workweek on people doing different kinds of work — say, between software developers and creative workers versus salespeople?

Obviously, there are practical differences in how the work is actually done, but the impact on employees across the companies in our various trials appears to be consistent. Employees report being more productive, more rested, less stressed, and happier. It is a thesis of mine that healthier, happier, more rested employees are more productive. Who would have thought!

What kind of training and prep do companies do to introduce a four-day week?

We encourage organizations to take a couple of months to plan and prepare before initiating the six-month trial. Both the preparation and trial allow organizations to flex the process to find out what works for them. The bulk of the efficiencies and improvements come from empowering staff members and creating a culture where individuals recognize that they have to work together to reduce wasted time. In my own organization and in many others, training was therefore limited and largely unnecessary.

How do you build employee trust to successfully achieve the stated goals when implementing a reduced workweek?

Put simply, if trust does not exist prior to the implementation of the four-day week, it is unlikely the implementation will be successful.

We run a 24-hour operation. Have you seen this done in organizations such as this, and what is the impact on the staffing numbers? Don’t you have to increase the number of employees?

In many ways, it is easier to introduce a four-day week into a seven-day, 24-hour operation, as the organization is already running shift patterns. A reduced-hour week simply requires shifts to be reconfigured. Remember that our thesis is that productivity actually increases, so in some operations, each shift can be staffed with fewer employees.

Alternatively, in people-heavy organizations such as medical facilities, it is likely that more staff will have to be recruited. The savings here, though, come from reduced recruitment time and turnover, fewer sick days (67% fewer, according to the trial data) with reduced impact on productivity, and lower costs for expensive temporary staff. Evidence also suggests that outcomes improve.

Have you done this work with clients in consulting industries? What kind of success have you had there? How was billable time affected?

Yes. PR firms, legal firms, and consultancies have all moved to the four-day week. Billable hours is often quoted as an impediment, but it is simply a mechanism to allocate costs. The clients pay on value and outcomes. If you can now do the work quicker under the four-day model, just adjust the cost allocation units. The client doesn’t care. A simple example: Two consultants produce an identical piece of work. One takes an hour, one half an hour. Why would the client pay twice as much for the former? In reality, billable hours get adjusted in order to align the bill with the amount the client will pay.

What obstacles did you encounter when making the switch to a four-day workweek?

The principal obstacle was that members of my leadership team were highly skeptical, if not hostile, and my board universally hated it. Bringing leadership on the journey and helping them to walk the talk is critical for the project’s success. I have set out the usual obstacles in various papers that are on the 4dayweek.com website and in my book, The 4 Day Week.

Can you provide sample policies used by companies?

The 4dayweek.com website has lots of helpful material, including the research and a white paper. That white paper includes the policies we introduced at Perpetual Guardian to implement the reduced schedule.