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We all know “that Friday feeling” and we love capturing it.
It’s when our work for the week is almost done and we’re skating toward the weekend. Then an email hits our inbox. Somebody wants to hold a meeting. At 4:30 PM. On a Friday.
Is that even legal?
All joking aside, yes it’s legal to have a meeting on Friday afternoon. Is it smart? Is it productive? Is it necessary? Maybe not.
We’ve been scouring the internet and reading every article about reducing the workweek to four days. We’ve heard that it’s an overwhelming success, and we’ve also heard that it’s “greatly overstated” and too good to be true.
Are we operating on a five-day, 40-hour schedule for a good reason? Is 40 the magic number due to tons of studies and data? Are we actually working a 40-hour workweek or much more? How do those Thursday night emails factor in? How does the Sunday panic factor in? Is your commute to work your own “free time”? Do our lives belong to work in exchange for a paycheck?
We do know one thing for sure—and it’s become increasingly obvious over the last two years.
Employees are burnt out and ready to quit. There is even a Japanese word, karoshi, that describes death by stress or depression caused by overwork.
The system is broken and something needs to change.
Editor’s Note:
Before going into this article, I wanted to admit that I started to feel very pro-four-day workweek as I read all the research. More accurately, I am pro-trying what works and pro-breaking old cycles that don’t serve us.
As a working mother, I believe solutions like a four-day workweek can level the playing field that has been so pitched in favor of white men.
Additionally, I have found that many arguments against trying a four-day workweek rely only on an “it’s the way it is” mentality.
Finally, I am anti-kindergarten work environments. I believe that employees should be given the space and breadth to achieve their best output as it fits in their life, where appropriate.
Employees shouldn’t be policed, given zero flexibility, painstakingly time-clocked, or deprived of trust unless they break it.
The Arbitrary History of the 40-Hour Workweek Framework
We seem to love to continue traditions like these standard workweeks that are old for that very reason alone—that they’ve just “been around” since before we can remember. Cue the eye rolls.
The 40-hour, five-day workweek is no different.
This schedule became a part of American labor laws in the 1930s as a response to many laborers pulling 14-hour workdays regularly. That’s a—pulls out calculator—70-hour workweek at minimum.
A popular 1880s slogan pushed for “eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what we will.”
The Fair Labor Standards Act was passed in 1938. Among other things, it capped work at 40 hours a week, with overtime promised to those who exceeded that.
However, over time, the workdays fattened back to their old supersized selves.
As the internet keeps us connected 24-hours a day, your work creeps up to you in more insidious ways. It’s a three-minute “fix” here, a five-minute “check-in” there, and a three-hour “get ahead of the game” computer session on Sunday evening.
When you’re on vacation, you might be checking emails, responding to “crises,” and generally never logging off. When you come back, you realize, you never really disconnected at all. Now, you’re tired from your vacation—the one you never really enjoyed.
So why has nothing changed since 1930?
The fight against the ever-growing workweek never went anywhere. However, whenever it gained traction, boom, we were hit by a recession and its favorite companion, unemployment.
So why now?
We’re Working More Than Ever + We’re Burning Out
We all know what happened in March of 2020—we're looking at you, Covid-19.
Suddenly, this “will they, won’t they?” discussion around the unlikelihood of the traditional workplace going remote was set—at least for the moment.
Many people took their work home. They made things work, despite everything working against them.
Women Are Being Forced Out of Work
Mothers, especially women of color, took a huge blow during the pandemic. Nearly three million women were forced out of the workforce during 2020 and 2021 to care for their dependents.
We want to make one thing clear. These women didn’t “leave” the workforce. They didn’t “get laid off” from their jobs. They didn’t “choose to quit” their careers. They were forced out by a system that cannot sustain life beyond work.
Low Wage + Essential Workers Are Subject to "Just in Time" Scheduling
Essential workers worked more than ever before, terrified that they, too, might lose their income.
Many employees in low-wage service jobs continued to face another problem only made worse by the pandemic.
“Just in time” scheduling is a tactic used to maximize profitability. It’s typically used in retail, hospitality, or other industries where seasonality can dictate scheduling needs. In many cases, workers could receive their schedule 24 hours before it begins.
A constantly-changing schedule comes with all sorts of problems—including but not limited to income instability, childcare complications, and burnout.
We could go on and on. The labor system is clearly broken. The pandemic has undone decades of progress by women in one fell swoop.
Can a four-day workweek fix all of that? No, but it can be a step in the right direction.
Is a Shorter Work Week Really Working? A Look at the Studies in Iceland + Elsewhere
The BBC has declared the four-day workweek to be “an overwhelming success” in Iceland.
Another article, published by Australia’s The Conversation calls it “less spectacular” than we’re meant to believe.
Between 2015 and 2019, Reykjavik’s City Council and the national government ran a series of trials across industries. More than 2,500 workers (about one percent of the working population) decreased their work hours without decreasing pay.
Industries in the study include schools, post offices, social services, and healthcare workers.
The resulting success prompted unions to renegotiate held working patterns. As of publishing date, 86 percent of Iceland’s workforce has reduced working hours or are on their way to fewer hours.
Workers reported reduced stress, lessened risk of burnout, better health, and more work-life balance.
The Argument Against the Four-Day Workweek
As for the article deeming this experiment as overstated, I’m skeptical that it’s not just clickbait, but take a look for yourself.
The writer explores the possibility that The Hawthorne Effect might have been in play to exaggerate the positive outcome in Iceland.
The Hawthorne Effect describes a situation in which test subjects are aware of what’s being studied, so their behavior changes to suit the outcome.
To that, I’d ask this question: isn’t the entire workplace a bit of a Hawthorne Effect? Don’t we all enhance our productivity while on the clock to get the best outcome?
If the “reward” is a four-day workweek or the continuation of a four-day workweek, aren’t we all going to maximize our productivity to fit?
Other Notable Four-Day Workweek Trials
As of the publishing date, Japan, Scotland, New Zealand, and Spain have also explored four-day workweeks with successful results.
Aside from national studies, there have also been companies instituting four-day workweeks.
Notably, social media management company Buffer has pioneered the use of the four-day workweek. In May of 2020, they tried a one-month trial of the shortened workweek, which turned into a six-month trial.
Finally, after six months with internal surveys, Buffer switched to a four-day workweek—indefinitely.
While I’d implore you to read all about Buffer’s journey by clicking the links above, the abbreviated outcomes are as follows:
- Increased autonomy
- Increased happiness
- Increased productivity
- Reduced stress levels
Another great resource is this article from The Atlantic, which details companies across a variety of industries succeeding in implementing four-day workweeks. They’re not all software companies, either.
Lastly, this genius spread out his vacation time on Fridays to DIY his own four-day week.
The Five-Day Workweek Productivity Roundup: Statistics and Anecdotes
Studies aside, we’ve all worked a four-day workweek here and there. We survived the shorter work week!
Americans, no strangers to a federal Monday holiday, do the four-day workweek a few times a year already.
Those weeks that lose an extra day following President’s Day, Labor Day, and Memorial Day don’t see productivity loss of 20 percent.
We all know, anecdotally, that we’re motivated to get our work done before a long holiday, an extended weekend, or at the end of the project.
We all know the accomplishment we feel when we hit midday Wednesday and we are “over the hump”—but could that hump occur sooner?
The Best + Worst Days of the Week for Productivity
According to a variety of studies, Fridays are consistently the least productive day of the week.
Project management company Redbooth reports that your best days for productivity are Monday and Tuesday.
Statistically speaking, there’s also a huge case for the productivity of a Tuesday. Tuesday is the golden child of the week for time spent, work completed, and meetings scheduled.
Tuesday is never going anywhere. We love you, Tuesday.
Other Alternative Work-Life Configurations + How They Work
The four-day workweek might not be appealing to you. There are a few other configurations that some people swear by.
Here’s what they are and why they work in certain situations.
The Five-Hour Workday
The name may have given it away, but the five-hour workday relies on shorter hours completed over more days.
If you were to run an honest audit of the work you have to achieve during the week, the improvements you should make in your work, and the time you spend being completely distracted, where are your hours?
When you get into a productive flow state for deep work, your productivity soars. Suddenly, you are able to achieve five hours of work within 60 minutes. When you’re working less, maybe you could reach flow state more often?
Flexible, Staggered Schedules
Think of a time when you couldn’t sleep. As you watch your clock tick to 2:01 AM, 2:36 AM, and beyond, you know your workday is going to be shot.
What if you were able to get your work done when it was best for you?
Unless you’re in a customer-facing role, much of our work has a final deadline—how we attack the work until the final due date is up to us, right?
That could mean that you could hit snooze that Monday morning after a restless night. It means you could wake up a little later, rested, and get your work done.
Flexible, staggered schedules allow workers to maximize their productivity on their terms—and create better work-life balance and mental health benefits.
This is incredibly advantageous for caretakers, parents, or those with health issues that require frequent doctor visits—as those cannot be accommodated on a two-day weekend.
The Cons of Four-Day Workweek
We only want to extoll the value of a four-day workweek, but it doesn’t work everywhere. Here are a few reasons it might not work at your office.
Going Forward Without Convincing Buy-In or Without Data Points
If your company goes to a four-day workweek without total buy-in or without enough support, it’s likely not going to work.
As of publishing, we are also navigating a push from many employees to stay working from home while their employers want them back in their cubicles. We spoke about this on an episode of our podcast, where we discussed The Great Resignation.
What’s painfully absent from these conversations is a real conversation with employees, measurement of data, and analysis of feedback.
In this case, our advice would be to follow Buffer’s lead as mentioned above. Conduct anonymous surveys. Allow your employees to share their insights, their experience, and how things are working (or how they’re failing).
At times, employers love to act shocked or appalled when a high performer wants to move on from their role. Oftentimes, the writing's on the wall.
The employer just wasn’t paying attention. If you’re an employer reading this, pay attention to your employees and their employee satisfaction levels. It doesn’t even mean you need to conduct lengthy surveys. It can be as easy as a check-in to say “How are you doing? How are things working for you? What can I do differently?” Launch a pilot program to test shorter workweeks and see if they boost morale and employee engagement without a decrease in productivity and creativity.
Customer-Facing Businesses
Another contention point against the four-day workweek is customer satisfaction and customer service. For example, what happens when a customer encounters a problem at 6:00 PM on a Thursday? Do they have to wait until Monday to potentially connect for a solution?
This contention point is valid, but also easily fixed. In any workplace, there is the risk of an off-hours problem. That’s where staggered schedules or shifts come into play.
In these situations, there can be employees who work an alternative schedule, such as a Wednesday through Saturday or a Thursday through Sunday.
Implementing Four-Day Condensed Schedules
This may not be a bad thing, per se, but proceed with caution.
Research shows that workers across the board achieve around three hours of maximum productivity per day. By condensing a five-day week/ 40-hour week into four days/ 32-hour workweek, are you missing out on three hours of productivity?
Moreover, why are you stuck on forty hours, to begin with? Make sure the emphasis on time spent is not taking precedence over people and actual productivity.
However, some employees might be keen to work more hours per day to have three undisturbed days in a row to themselves.
How to Ask Your Boss for a Four-Day Work Week
If we’ve done our job, you’re likely yearning for a four-day workweek, but the question is this: can you actually make it happen?
The answer is: it depends—as in, it depends on a number of factors. If management has shown that they are open to flexible work, remote work options, and other hybrid work scenarios, you’re at a better starting point than many others.
If your management has been resistant to change and champions a “clock in, clock out” mentality, it’s going to be a more difficult sell—to say the least.
Our biggest piece of advice is to present data on the success of four-day workweeks—including money saved, turnover decreases, and other irrefutable evidence.
If you can find a case study about a business similar to yours or in the same industry, you’ll be able to build an even better case for switching to a four-day workweek.
The bottom line is that some bosses are not going to be receptive. While it’s always “worth the shot” to ask, you might approach these bosses by suggesting an incremental approach to a shorter week.
Perhaps you might suggest shortened “summer Fridays,” one four-day workweek per month, or another trial period.
Here is a template you may use to get the conversation started. You can also find this template and other templates in our article, How to Ask Your Boss for Anything.
SUBJECT LINE: Conversation Around Improved Work Setup
Greetings [NAME],
I hope this email reaches you well.
As I’m sure you’re aware, there is a lot of discussion around the benefits of the Four-Day Workweek, especially when it comes to productivity and retention.
I wanted to open a discussion about our team moving to a four-day workweek on a trial basis.
I thought this article from The Atlantic might interest you—especially as it includes case studies to a variety of industries trialing the four-day workweek with huge success.
I understand that this is a big conversation, but I have some ideas on how we could track its impact and get overall buy-in from the team.
I’m happy to lead the effort on presenting and implementing a successful four-day workweek for our team.
Best,
[NAME]
Greetings [NAME],
I hope this email reaches you well.
As I’m sure you’re aware, there is a lot of discussion around the benefits of the Four-Day Workweek, especially when it comes to productivity and retention.
I wanted to open a discussion about our team moving to a four-day workweek on a trial basis.
I thought this article from The Atlantic might interest you—especially as it includes case studies to a variety of industries trialing the four-day workweek with huge success.
I understand that this is a big conversation, but I have some ideas on how we could track its impact and get overall buy-in from the team.
I’m happy to lead the effort on presenting and implementing a successful four-day workweek for our team.
Best,
[NAME]
