Four-day work week a global hit

Andrew Barnes’ four-day working week experiment in late 2018 at the legal services company he leads has made him famous.

‘‘At one point, the Perpetual Guardian four-day week was the most-read story in the New York Times after the Trump/Putin summit,’’ Barnes said.

During the past week Auckland-based Barnes, whose book The 4 Day Week has now gone on sale, was interviewed by reporters from the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Bulgaria, and media in Turkey have now become interested.

The book tells the story of Perpetual Guardian’s experiment, and subsequent permanent switch, to a four-day working week. While not everyone in the company decided to work for just four days a week, those who wanted to could, providing they were productive enough to justify it. The idea came to Barnes when he read an Economist article on research showing workers were typically productive for only 1.5-2.5 hours a day. ‘‘I worked out the maths,’’ Barnes said. ‘‘My theory was if each of my employees was productive for an average of about 2.5 hours per day, then as an employer I only needed to claw back 40 more productive minutes per day to get the same output from staff in a four-day week as in a five-day week.

‘‘If I succeeded, productivity would remain steady and so would profitability. This was the inception of what we now call the 100-80-100 rule. Staff receive 100 per cent of their contractual compensation and need to work only 80 per cent of the time, provided they deliver 100 per cent of the agreed productivity.’’

Barnes believed the four-day working week idea had universal appeal in a world in which people everywhere were struggling to juggle the demands of work, travel and family. ‘‘Everyone is in the same boat. We are overconnected, over-worked and we need two salaries.’’

Barnes believed the appeal of the Perpetual Guardian experiment was partly due to its scientific rigour, as Barnes had independent researchers track the eight-week trial, and gather data.

The results convinced him the five-day week was a 19th-century construct that was not fit for purpose in the 21st century.

The four-day working week concept was challenging for people to get their heads around, and challenging for workers.

In workaholic Japan, efforts to get people to work fewer hours, sometimes had to be coupled with training on what to spend the time on, Barnes said.

‘‘They actually had a programme to help you work out what you did with your family. ‘‘We are not as bad as that. ‘‘But we had people who said they did not know what they were going to do with their time off.’’