How-to guide for a four-day week
Atool kit for employers interested in implementing the fourday week was released this month, building on the trial and eventual adoption of the work style by Perpetual Guardian.
For eight weeks last year the New Zealand financial services firm trialled a four-day working week with 240 staff members, without reduced pay, to see what effect it would have on workers’ productivity and motivation.
Perpetual Guardian managing director Andrew Barnes teamed up with the University of Auckland and AUT University to measure the initiative’s success. The results were win-win, finding productivity was maintained, stress levels were lowered, and work-life balance was improved.
Now, the white paper has turned those results into recommendations for businesses looking to do the same.
Key recommendations include creating policies that can flex depending on workloads and requirements, ensuring staff understand there will be times they won’t get their rest day, and ensuring productivity measures are individualised for different people and parts of the business.
Professor Jarrod Haar, a human resource management expert from AUT University’s business school, conducted the quantitative analysis.
He said trust in management went up among employees and also across teams because people had to rely on each other to get the work done. This contributed to greater engagement, performance and staff retention.
However, Barnes’ experience led him to establish an opt-in process because not everyone wanted to work a four-day week.
The opt-in process, which also allows Barnes to gift employees a day off, is an important part of how it works, he said.
‘‘People are acknowledging that this is quite a special thing, and that means that we get the productivity we need, and in turn, our employees get the work-life balance that they need,’’ he said. they pay you. That’s the job; that’s what you get.’’
On top of that, freelance contractors usually have no holiday pay, sick pay, or other hard-won entitlements that employees have.
‘‘If we can find a way to deliver flexibility to people but preserve access to all of those protections, that’s a better thing. And that basically means the country isn’t going to pick up an enormous tab in 30 years’ time,’’ Barnes said.
Council of Trade Unions president Richard Wagstaff said unions had been pushing for shorter working weeks for decades before it went backwards in the 1970s. He said it was important to give workers control over when they work rather than creating an environment where they were endlessly available.
‘‘We would support all of those things, and we really welcome this initiative and we would urge other firms and workers to see what had been learned from it and can we extend a reduction in working time whilst maintaining good business,’’ he said.
According to the white paper, the four-day week has already engaged 4 billion people, generating 9500 social media posts and 2700 new articles.
A stumbling block Barnes encountered was the clearly defined normal hours of work in the Employment Relations Act, in particular a five-day work week.
‘‘If I have one appeal to the Government it is to start to look at your legislation and recognise that we’re having to do workarounds to get around this problem,’’ Barnes said.
But building on the success of Perpetual Guardian and making a wider impact is what it’s all about now, Barnes said.
‘‘New Zealand Inc should be thinking about how to do it.’’