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Never one to shy away from change, we at Thrive have recently rolled out a 4 Day Work Week trial with the help of Dr. Charlotte Rae, a psychologist from The University of Sussex. We’re excited to see the impact of this experiment on all areas of the business – but in this blog, we’ll be focussing specifically on productivity.
Last year, we published our blog “4 day work week vs. 5 day work week: which is better?” in which we compared the merits and drawbacks of both. In that blog, we explained that this isn’t the first time the length of the working week has been challenged.
“Along with the quadricycle and a variety of objectively more popular inventions, the concept of a weekend as we know it now comes to us courtesy of American car manufacturer Henry Ford. In 1914, he made the decision to shorten his factory’s rota from six to five days - and by 1933, this was standard across the country.
One year later and across the Atlantic, John Boot (nepo baby and chairman of Boots) adopted the same practice. Ninety years on, it’s still the status quo - but once again, a shift is taking place.
Enter the four day work-week: the five day work-week’s fun, younger cousin who has some new ideas about how to run things. As more and more companies across the world adopt this new practice, the standard Monday - Friday status quo is at risk of seeming as antique and outdated as Henry Ford’s quadricycle.”
- Blog: 4 day work week vs. 5 day work week: which is better? - Thrive Learning
With this new way of working, does productivity suffer?
In this blog we’ll share some of the lessons we’ve learned from Dr. Charlotte Rae, and explore how you can make 4 day work week work for you. (Try saying that five times fast…)
A lot has changed in the last few years. A global pandemic is no longer just the plot-line of a disaster movie, the cost of living has skyrocketed so high that paying £5 for a 99 ice cream doesn’t seem out of the question, and flexible working is gradually becoming the expected standard.
Over 90% of the 61 companies that took part in the 2022 4 Day Work Week Trial have continued working this way, and it’s easy to see why. Let’s cast our minds back in time to our blog from 2023, and recall some of the benefits we listed:
The first and most obvious benefit is that the extra day can be beneficial for your physical and mental health. Research shows that those who are “time-poor” experience higher levels of stress, anxiety and unhappiness. Conversely, those who are “time-affluent” are able to focus on their physical and mental health, making them happier overall.
Dr. Charlotte Rae confirms this. During her episode of Thrive’s Diary of a CLO podcast with Helen Marshall, she explains that on average, sleep increases by 13 minutes per night after switching to a 4 day week, despite bedtimes not changing. This demonstrates a reduction in stress and goes to further prove the impact it has on both mental and physical health. In turn, staff perform better when at work as they are more alert and less stressed.
Despite shifts in our overall attitudes towards gender roles, studies show that women still shoulder the burden of domestic labour – even if both partners are in full-time work.
This means that the five day work week – like so many other things – disproportionately impacts women. A shorter week could potentially be a step in the right direction, ensuring that one extra day is freed up for both partners and redistributing the domestic labour a bit more evenly.
This would, in turn, allow women to take on higher-paying jobs.
Another benefit of the 4 day working week is its impact, or lack thereof, on the environment.
Economist and sociology professor Juliet Schor found an undeniable link between working hours and climate footprint in high-income countries. With fewer commutes taking place and a reduction in energy costs incurred by the running of workplaces, the new four day work-week gets the green stamp of approval.
Even though a shorter week might initially seem inefficient to those who are used to the traditional model, it looks like the opposite could in fact be true. 4 day work-week advocates posit that after an extra day to unwind, relax and refresh, employees will be much more likely to maintain focus and produce their best work.
It also helps that happy workers = greater staff retention. If your employees are comfortable and satisfied with their work-life balance, they’re a lot less likely to quit.
Spoiler: No, it isn’t. But proponents of the traditional 5 day working week tend to argue that productivity and output suffers when only working 4 days. Although the opposite appears to be true, it’s still worth exploring some tips and tricks to keep you as efficient and productive as possible once that fifth day is dropped.
Dr. Charlotte Rae’s first piece of advice? Ditch the unnecessarily long meetings.
“We often set meetings in the calendar for an hour, but in fact you might be able to get it done in half an hour, using a strict agenda and being really focused.”
And The World Economic Forum agrees. Despite our best intentions, humans do have these pesky little things called attention spans -- and those attention spans have limits. By keeping meetings short, you're being realistic about the amount of bandwidth people have to remain productive and participatory during them.
On top of this, The World Economic Forum argues that shorter meetings reduce decision fatigue. You know, that thing that Apple founder Steve Jobs sought to overcome by wearing the same -- admittedly stylish -- black turtleneck every single day of his life? When you reduce the amount of options (or time) to make a decision, it becomes necessary to act decisively. Consider shorter meetings the black turtleneck of your organisation’s wardrobe.
Raise your hand if you’ve ever put your calendar into “Focus Time” only to instantly respond to a request that comes through from a colleague, illustrated by the ever-enticing notification icon laid over your messaging app?
Demonstrating that you’re unavailable with a headphones icon next to your screen-name is one thing – but taking it one step further by physically closing your messaging app is what actually makes this productivity tip work.
“If you’re constantly being ‘ping!’-ed by instant messaging, it’s going to take you so much longer to accomplish that task.”
- Dr. Charlotte Rae.
Dr. Rae makes the point that in order for a four day work week to be a success, there is one “magic key ingredient” that needs to take place: Human behaviour change.
Beyond just implementing new habits like the ones listed above, people – and businesses – need to fundamentally shift their innate human behaviour in order to remain productive with fewer hours. During the podcast, she cites the example of checking emails.
“When we do focus groups, one of the questions I’ll ask is: ‘When you first sit down to work in the morning, how many of you open up your email inbox, just by habit, by default?’ Usually about 60/70 per cent of hands go up – but when you ask people: ‘What is your actual job?’ very few of them say that it’s to monitor an email inbox. Switching out of those habits that we don’t even realise we’re doing in terms of performing work behaviours … that takes cognitive effort. It takes a good few attempts to switch out of those unhelpful work behaviours.”
- Dr Charlotte Rae
Dr. Charlotte emphasises that in order to truly embed helpful behaviours, organisations need to be patient and iterative. It may take a few attempts, and involve trial and error. It’s important to be patient, keep an open mind, and take an experimental approach to find out what truly works.
It’s safe to say that we’re excited and encouraged by the roll-out of the four day work week trial at Thrive. Would you be tempted to implement this in your organisation – or do you think a 5 day work week is the only way? Join the conversation over on LinkedIn.
Explore what impact Thrive could make for your team and your learners today.
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Never one to shy away from change, we at Thrive have recently rolled out a 4 Day Work Week trial with the help of Dr. Charlotte Rae, a psychologist from The University of Sussex. We’re excited to see the impact of this experiment on all areas of the business – but in this blog, we’ll be focussing specifically on productivity.
Last year, we published our blog “4 day work week vs. 5 day work week: which is better?” in which we compared the merits and drawbacks of both. In that blog, we explained that this isn’t the first time the length of the working week has been challenged.
“Along with the quadricycle and a variety of objectively more popular inventions, the concept of a weekend as we know it now comes to us courtesy of American car manufacturer Henry Ford. In 1914, he made the decision to shorten his factory’s rota from six to five days - and by 1933, this was standard across the country.
One year later and across the Atlantic, John Boot (nepo baby and chairman of Boots) adopted the same practice. Ninety years on, it’s still the status quo - but once again, a shift is taking place.
Enter the four day work-week: the five day work-week’s fun, younger cousin who has some new ideas about how to run things. As more and more companies across the world adopt this new practice, the standard Monday - Friday status quo is at risk of seeming as antique and outdated as Henry Ford’s quadricycle.”
- Blog: 4 day work week vs. 5 day work week: which is better? - Thrive Learning
With this new way of working, does productivity suffer?
In this blog we’ll share some of the lessons we’ve learned from Dr. Charlotte Rae, and explore how you can make 4 day work week work for you. (Try saying that five times fast…)
A lot has changed in the last few years. A global pandemic is no longer just the plot-line of a disaster movie, the cost of living has skyrocketed so high that paying £5 for a 99 ice cream doesn’t seem out of the question, and flexible working is gradually becoming the expected standard.
Over 90% of the 61 companies that took part in the 2022 4 Day Work Week Trial have continued working this way, and it’s easy to see why. Let’s cast our minds back in time to our blog from 2023, and recall some of the benefits we listed:
The first and most obvious benefit is that the extra day can be beneficial for your physical and mental health. Research shows that those who are “time-poor” experience higher levels of stress, anxiety and unhappiness. Conversely, those who are “time-affluent” are able to focus on their physical and mental health, making them happier overall.
Dr. Charlotte Rae confirms this. During her episode of Thrive’s Diary of a CLO podcast with Helen Marshall, she explains that on average, sleep increases by 13 minutes per night after switching to a 4 day week, despite bedtimes not changing. This demonstrates a reduction in stress and goes to further prove the impact it has on both mental and physical health. In turn, staff perform better when at work as they are more alert and less stressed.
Despite shifts in our overall attitudes towards gender roles, studies show that women still shoulder the burden of domestic labour – even if both partners are in full-time work.
This means that the five day work week – like so many other things – disproportionately impacts women. A shorter week could potentially be a step in the right direction, ensuring that one extra day is freed up for both partners and redistributing the domestic labour a bit more evenly.
This would, in turn, allow women to take on higher-paying jobs.
Another benefit of the 4 day working week is its impact, or lack thereof, on the environment.
Economist and sociology professor Juliet Schor found an undeniable link between working hours and climate footprint in high-income countries. With fewer commutes taking place and a reduction in energy costs incurred by the running of workplaces, the new four day work-week gets the green stamp of approval.
Even though a shorter week might initially seem inefficient to those who are used to the traditional model, it looks like the opposite could in fact be true. 4 day work-week advocates posit that after an extra day to unwind, relax and refresh, employees will be much more likely to maintain focus and produce their best work.
It also helps that happy workers = greater staff retention. If your employees are comfortable and satisfied with their work-life balance, they’re a lot less likely to quit.
Spoiler: No, it isn’t. But proponents of the traditional 5 day working week tend to argue that productivity and output suffers when only working 4 days. Although the opposite appears to be true, it’s still worth exploring some tips and tricks to keep you as efficient and productive as possible once that fifth day is dropped.
Dr. Charlotte Rae’s first piece of advice? Ditch the unnecessarily long meetings.
“We often set meetings in the calendar for an hour, but in fact you might be able to get it done in half an hour, using a strict agenda and being really focused.”
And The World Economic Forum agrees. Despite our best intentions, humans do have these pesky little things called attention spans -- and those attention spans have limits. By keeping meetings short, you're being realistic about the amount of bandwidth people have to remain productive and participatory during them.
On top of this, The World Economic Forum argues that shorter meetings reduce decision fatigue. You know, that thing that Apple founder Steve Jobs sought to overcome by wearing the same -- admittedly stylish -- black turtleneck every single day of his life? When you reduce the amount of options (or time) to make a decision, it becomes necessary to act decisively. Consider shorter meetings the black turtleneck of your organisation’s wardrobe.
Raise your hand if you’ve ever put your calendar into “Focus Time” only to instantly respond to a request that comes through from a colleague, illustrated by the ever-enticing notification icon laid over your messaging app?
Demonstrating that you’re unavailable with a headphones icon next to your screen-name is one thing – but taking it one step further by physically closing your messaging app is what actually makes this productivity tip work.
“If you’re constantly being ‘ping!’-ed by instant messaging, it’s going to take you so much longer to accomplish that task.”
- Dr. Charlotte Rae.
Dr. Rae makes the point that in order for a four day work week to be a success, there is one “magic key ingredient” that needs to take place: Human behaviour change.
Beyond just implementing new habits like the ones listed above, people – and businesses – need to fundamentally shift their innate human behaviour in order to remain productive with fewer hours. During the podcast, she cites the example of checking emails.
“When we do focus groups, one of the questions I’ll ask is: ‘When you first sit down to work in the morning, how many of you open up your email inbox, just by habit, by default?’ Usually about 60/70 per cent of hands go up – but when you ask people: ‘What is your actual job?’ very few of them say that it’s to monitor an email inbox. Switching out of those habits that we don’t even realise we’re doing in terms of performing work behaviours … that takes cognitive effort. It takes a good few attempts to switch out of those unhelpful work behaviours.”
- Dr Charlotte Rae
Dr. Charlotte emphasises that in order to truly embed helpful behaviours, organisations need to be patient and iterative. It may take a few attempts, and involve trial and error. It’s important to be patient, keep an open mind, and take an experimental approach to find out what truly works.
It’s safe to say that we’re excited and encouraged by the roll-out of the four day work week trial at Thrive. Would you be tempted to implement this in your organisation – or do you think a 5 day work week is the only way? Join the conversation over on LinkedIn.
Explore what impact Thrive could make for your team and your learners today.
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