The Complete Guide to Scheduling a 4-Day Work Week
One of the good things that came with the pandemic is increased work flexibility. With it, 4-day work suddenly became an option for many people whose jobs had just become remote. And while there are many benefits of switching to a 4-day work week, implementing this strategy isn’t so straightforward.
Scheduling a 4-day work week usually involves keeping your regular hours from Monday to Thursday and getting Friday through Sunday off. While the structure varies across companies, the typical 4-day work week involves working four eight-hour shifts while getting paid the same salary.
Wondering how to implement a four-day work week while running your business? Read the article to find out!
How To Set Up a 4-Day Work Week
While the idea of a three-day weekend sounds exciting, implementing such a strategy takes planning, preparation, and a wholesome notion of how such a change will impact your business. Numerous other factors must be considered before this system can be integrated into your business.
If you’re looking to implement a 4-day work week for some or all of your employees, you should consider the following factors when determining how to schedule it.
Find What Works
As mentioned in the previous section, the typical four-day work week involves four eight-hour shifts instead of five, without any reduction in pay. We will refer to this kind of arrangement for the remainder of this article.
However, not all businesses are the same, and yours may require a different working arrangement. Some companies give every second Friday off, while others may stagger employee shifts so that each gets a different weekeday off.
Each business is different, and while some may be able to close down the entire office one extra day a week, some will need to keep enough staff on to operate at least five days a week. Consider your business’s needs when determining how to best schedule a 4-day work week.
See How Different Areas Will Be Impacted
Whether you’re pitching a four-day work week to your supervisor or running your own business, it’s crucial to analyze the different parts of the business that will be impacted by this change in schedule.
If you’re in customer care services or the hospitality industry, it means your customers won’t be able to resolve queries or get in touch with you on Fridays either. Keep this in mind before implementing any changes, and understand that you may experience some turbulence initially.
You also want to consider how employees will be affected by this change because their adaptability will determine the success of this new schedule.
As such, it’s best to consult with human resources and ask your employees what they think about a change in this schedule. What are their concerns with such a change? What positives can they see with a 4-day work week?
You can’t implement a new schedule and expect everyone to follow without complaint willingly. It’s best to get employee suggestions because you may overlook certain things they can point out. Their ideas will give you a better understanding of scheduling a 4-day work week for your organization.
Document Everything
As you begin to implement this schedule, you’ll notice the focus shifting from time spent at the office to output generated at work. And this shift is critical for a successful change to a 4-day work week.
To encourage such a shift, you want to gather a manual with your company processes and make them accessible to all employees. Recording every process may seem time-consuming, but it can help improve productivity and reduce the time spent performing unnecessary tasks.
Most tasks at an organization are recurring in nature, with few requiring feedback or back-and-forth communication. By documenting the processes for these tasks and sharing them with employees, you can help save a lot of time.
It may not seem like much, but all the time saved will allow your employees to deepen their focus during those four days of work.
Understand Workplace Policies
One of the most important aspects of shifting the workplace schedule is understanding how existing policies fit with the new work timings.
For example, there’s a daily overtime wage in most places, and employers are expected to pay employees as much.
If you’re thinking of switching to a four-day work week but changing work times to eight-hour shifts, you may lose money in the long run. Of course, this article is for those looking to keep eight-hour shifts, so this bit of information may be irrelevant.
However, it’s crucial to understand how specific policies affect your work environment and how a new schedule may change how these policies work. You want to work with your HR department on this and understand how these changes will impact employee lives.
Things like sick leaves and paid time off may be affected by these changes. As employees are required to work fewer days, you may need to reduce the number of leaves they’re allowed to take in a month. If so, you need to see if you’re legally entitled to do that and consider the repercussions this change will have on your employees.
Additionally, what does shifting to a four-hour work week mean for your part-time employees? Essentially, your full-time employees are getting the same salary for working fewer hours. So you can either reduce the work hours of your part-time employees and make it clear to them that the 4-day work week is for full-time employees.
However, it’s best to make Fridays mandatory holidays for your part-time employees as well, to keep things consistent in your organization.
Reduce Meetings
Perhaps the most crucial part of implementing a four-day work week is figuring out what process to cut out so you have more time during the week. And meetings are one of the most time-consuming aspects of any business.
Fortunately, working within a constrained time can help you figure out, with certainty, which meetings are actually worth having and which can be canceled without consequence.
You can start by cutting the meeting in half, like reducing one-hour sessions to thirty minutes. You can also reduce the number of meetings per month by half. You can also use emails to communicate most information that is usually shared in meetings.
Once you’ve done this, it’s best to define an agenda for every meeting that takes place so that it can be concluded quickly. Additionally, you may need to be brutally honest and see whether some meetings are worth the extra time spent on them.
If you can strike out a meeting or two without affecting your business, consider doing so, as this will give your employees several additional hours during the week.
Write Out Expectations
While a four-day work week sounds fun, casual, and a better way to live, it will only be implemented if there’s some benefit to the organization. To figure out what these benefits are, you need to forecast the possible advantages of this change in schedule.
You may be able to predict an increase in productivity or quicker operations due to working within a specified period. Whatever your expectations, it’s crucial to write them down and have a plan to ensure these changes are implemented once you switch to a four-day work week.
Recording this information will also allow you to show your higher-ups how a four-day work week is more efficient. With this list of expectations, you can correct courses along the way and ensure that your new schedule is adequate.
Provide Training
Remember that a new schedule involves an overhaul of the procedures people are used to. As such, you will need to retrain managers on how to operate using the four days they have during the week.
Employees must also learn ways to manage their time better, maximizing output in the 32 hours allotted for their work.
For example, talk to employees about how they should respond to messages through email or Slack. It’s best to let them know that immediate responses are discouraged as frequent messaging distracts employees from the task at hand. Instead, they must set aside time to respond to emails and use the rest of their day to focus on deep work.
These straightforward hacks may not seem like much, but the tiny changes in routine procedures will help your employees manage their time better and adapt to the four-day work week.
Pros and Cons of a Four-Day Work Week
Now that you have a better idea of how to implement a four-day work week at your workplace let’s look at why you should consider switching to this schedule.
Here are a few benefits of implementing a four-day workweek:
1. Cut Costs
From a business perspective, a four-day work week can help cut costs for everyone involved. Managers and employees spend one less day commuting to work, paying for lunch or coffee, and spending on fuel if they have their own vehicles.
Additionally, the office stays shut for an extra day during the week, four times a month. These four days can help reduce the running costs of your office building, like electricity and maintenance. Over time, these savings will accrue, saving your business a significant amount of money.
2. Increase in Productivity
Parkinson’s law is a phenomenon that shows that people will take as much time as they are given to complete a task. Give yourself three hours to finish a project, and you’ll take that long. Reduce that time to one hour, and you’ll work with added focus to finish the job within that time.
The same is valid for employees at your office. Many may be procrastinating or taking a lot longer on tasks than they need to, and shifting to a 4-day work week can help increase productivity by allowing employees to focus on their most important tasks.
3. Happier Workforce
Another reason productivity can improve with a change in schedule is that employees tend to be a lot happier when they feel in control of their free time. And when you give an employee an extra day off every week, they get to spend that time with their families or pursue hobbies of their interest.
This sense of freedom can help improve the overall mental health of employees, making them more willing to work hard during those four working days.
Additionally, an extra day of rest or enjoyment keeps your employees much healthier, allowing them to work more efficiently. Further, this also reduces the number of sick days employees will take during the year.
4. Better Recruitment and Lower Turnover
As mentioned at the beginning of this article, the pandemic completely shifted how people look at work today. Flexibility is a crucial factor when people are selecting jobs today as they want more freedom to live and pursue things of their own interest.
As such, when you switch to a four-day work week, you may notice an increase in the number of applications when you’re looking to recruit new employees. Additionally, you’re sure to find valuable employees willing to share their high-level skills in exchange for the freedom your company offers.
Moreover, fewer employees are likely to leave an organization that gives them a three-day weekend to return to two-day weekends. The improved work-life balance ensures that your valuable employees stick around longer.
While the four-day work week seems ideal, there are a few disadvantages to it that need to be discussed, so you know how to deal with them. These include:
This schedule doesn’t work for all businesses as some industries (like healthcare or hospitality) need to operate throughout the week.
Implementing this schedule can be challenging as so many factors must be considered.
Employees are forced to work with tighter deadlines, which can be stressful initially, at least until they get used to it.
Final Thoughts
The four-hour work week is a business model of the future, and it’s becoming increasingly popular as people wish to experience more control over their free time. And while there are complex challenges to implementing such a work schedule, the potential benefits make it worth the shot.