Ep. 108 Could a 4 day work week improve employee well-being?

The Safety of Work

This report details the full findings of the world’s largest four-day working week trial to date, comprising 61 companies and around 2,900 workers, that took place in the UK from June to December 2022. The design of the trial involved two months of preparation for participants, with workshops, coaching, mentoring and peer support, drawing on the experience of companies who had already moved to a shorter working week, as well as leading research and consultancy organisations. The report results draw on administrative data from companies, survey data from employees, alongside a range of interviews conducted over the pilot period, providing measurement points at the beginning, middle, and end of the trial.

Discussion Points:

• Background on the five-day workweek
• We’ll set out to prove or review two central claims:
• Reduce hours worked, and maintain same productivity
• Reduced hours will provide benefits to the employees
• Digging in to the Autonomy organization and the researchers and authors
• Says “trial” but it’s more like a pilot program
• 61 companies, June to December 2022
• Issues with methodology - companies will change in 6 months coming out of Covid- a controlled trial would have been better
• The pilot only includes white collar jobs - no physical, operational, high-hazard businesses
• The revenue numbers
• Analysing the staff numbers- how many filled out the survey? What positions did the respondents hold in the company?
• Who experienced positive vs. negative changes in individual results
• Interviews from the “shop floor” was actually CEOs and office staff
• Eliminating wasted time from the five-day week
• What different companies preferred employees to do with their ‘extra time’
• Assumption 1: there is a business use case benefit- not true
• Assumption 2: benefits for staff - mixed results
• Takeaways:
• Don’t use averages
• Finding shared goals can be good for everyone
• Be aware of burden-shifting
• The answer to our episode’s question – It’s a promising idea, but results are mixed, and it requires more controlled trial research

Quotes:

“It’s important to note that this is a pre-Covid idea, this isn’t a response to Covid.” - Dr. Drew

“...there's a reason why we like to do controlled trials. That reason is that things change in any company over six months.” - Drew

“ …a lot of the qualitative data sample is very tiny. Only a third of the companies got spoken to, and only one senior representative who was already motivated to participate in the trial, would like to think that anything that their company does is successful.” - David

“I'm pretty sure if you picked any company, you're taking into account things like government subsidies for Covid, grants, and things like that. Everyone had very different business in 2021-2022.” - Drew

“We're not trying to accelerate the pace of work, we're trying to remove all of the unnecessary work.” - Drew

“I think people who plan the battle don't battle the plan. I like collaborative decision-making in general, but I really like it in relation to goal setting and how to achieve those goals.” - David

Resources:

Link to the Pilot Study

Autonomy

The Harwood Experiment Episode

The Safety of Work Podcast

The Safety of Work on LinkedIn

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