How you can Implement a 4-Day Work Week at Your Group

As workplaces evolve, organizations that want to entice and retain artistic and engaged staff should discover new methods to remain aggressive within the market.  One such method, the four-day work week, has gained appreciable consideration lately.

The four-day work week is supported by substantial analysis indicating improved worker well-being, elevated productiveness, and decreased burnout. Research have proven that corporations with 4 day work week expertise greater worker satisfaction, retention charges, and artistic output. A Microsoft Japan experiment revealed a 40% enhance in productiveness when the corporate carried out a four-day work week, and a report by Henley Enterprise College discovered that staff’ stress ranges decreased by 25% when transitioning to a shorter workweek.

However simply how do you implement a four-day work week? And what questions do it’s essential to contemplate earlier than giving it a attempt?

Arts Midwest made a shift to a 4 day work week in 2022. On this article, we search to offer an in depth roadmap for organizations contemplating this transformative change.

What’s a 4-Day Work Week?

A four-day work week is a scheduling association that challenges the standard norm of a five-day, forty-hour work week by lowering the usual schedule an worker works with out lowering their pay. Varied fashions of the four-day work week exist and may supply flexibility to accommodate totally different organizational wants and worker preferences.

1. Normal 4 Day, 32 Hour Week

The most typical mannequin of a four-day work week is a scheduling association the place full-time, salaried staff work for 4 days every week, leading to a 32-hour workweek.

2. Summer time Fridays Off

Some organizations use a four-day work week seasonally, giving staff “Summer time Fridays” off.

3. “Fortnight” Mannequin

One other strategy is the “fortnight” mannequin, the place staff take an extra paid day without work each two weeks. This construction maintains a constant workweek whereas providing common breaks to recharge.

4. 4/10 Schedule

In a “4/10” schedule, staff work 4, 10-hour days every week. This condensed work week permits for an additional day without work, offering an prolonged weekend and probably lowering commuting time and prices but it surely doesn’t cut back the overall hours labored. This mannequin isn’t as efficient at lowering burnout.

How Did We Get Right here?

Whereas the four-day work week seems like a radical shift to a few of us, the 5 day work week is lower than 100 years previous.

Earlier than 1900, a six-day work week was customary apply. Nevertheless, a transformative shift occurred within the early 1900s when labor unions and activists started advocating for five-day work weeks.

In 1940, an modification to the Honest Labor Requirements Act standardized the five-day forty-hour work week in america. On the time, economists predicted that the four-day work week would develop into the norm inside a few generations.

Shifting into the twenty first century, the COVID-19 pandemic prompted a profound reassessment of conventional workplace tradition, emphasizing the necessity for extra versatile work preparations and heightened consciousness of worker burnout.

In 2022, 4 Day Week International launched a research analyzing trials of the four-day work week in 41 U.S. corporations. The research discovered that the four-day work week was efficient at lowering stress and the vast majority of employers within the research determined to proceed the four-day work week completely.

Get Began at Your Group

Implementing a four-day work week might be transformative, providing essential advantages to people and organizational tradition. Nevertheless, it’s a main change that requires considerate planning, enter from all workers, and good communication.

We suggest following these steps to help a easy transition to your 4 Day Work Week:

Ask Key Questions

Shifting to a four-day work week is a serious change. Earlier than you get began, talk about your group’s causes for exploring the four-day work week.

Key inquiries to ask as you get began:

• What are the first causes we at the moment adhere to a five-day work week and are these causes essential to our mission? What would occur if we didn’t adhere to this construction?
• What’s motivating us to think about the four-day work week?
• Would a four-day work week convey us nearer to dwelling our organizational values?
• How is burnout affecting our organizational tradition?
• Are we able to undergo a serious change in how we work? How will we help workers via thischange?

Plan a Trial

Earlier than you decide to a four-day work week on a everlasting foundation, maintain a trial interval to see if this schedule is a match to your group. It’s essential to contain all groups in planning the trial with the intention to get full organizational buy-in and produce questions, considerations, and concepts to gentle. Our template for constructing a plan is a good device for getting began.

Launch Your Trial

After getting developed a plan to your trial, you’re prepared to start testing the four-day work week. Keep in mind that this might be a serious change and might be troublesome, significantly in the beginning. It’s particularly essential for leaders within the group to set expectations for his or her groups by committing to the brand new schedule themselves.

Gather Suggestions and Monitor Outcomes

Don’t wait till your trial is nearing the top to check-in along with your workers about the way it’s going. Ask about the way it’s going alongside the best way and supply help to workers who’re struggling.

Key inquiries to ask your workers:

• How is the four-day work week working for you?
• Can you discover time in your week to focus?
• Do you could have sufficient time in your week for collaboration with colleagues?
• Has the four-day work week introduced extra creativity into your work?

Determine to Proceed, Modify, or Cease

Whenever you attain the top of your trial interval, use the standards you developed within the planning section to determine if you’ll proceed. It’s all the time a terrific thought to ask your workers instantly for his or her enter concerning the resolution. Chances are you’ll establish changes that may strengthen your four-day work week.

Share Your Journey and What You Be taught

Many organizations are interested by exploring a four-day work week, however discover it formidable to attempt. In case you have success with the four-day work week, let others in your group know. Normalizing a four-day work week might help change issues for the higher in your group.

Case Examine: Arts Midwest’s Trial Plan

Main as much as our trial interval, all workers members at Arts Midwest attended a workers retreat the place they had been invited to lift questions, share considerations, and contribute concepts about the best way to run our trial interval.

Our Fundamental Agreements

• Our trial will final six months, from July 2022 to December 2022.
• Throughout our trial, our schedule might be Monday to Thursday, with Fridays off. It will assist reduce confusion about our schedule and assist us to speak externally about after we’re obtainable to work.
• Our workday size isn’t altering throughout the trial.
• There might be no change to compensation because of the four-day work week.
• We perceive that the four-day work week isn’t an alternative choice to versatile scheduling throughout the work week. It’s nonetheless okay to make use of PTO for private errands or appointments or to flex hours throughout the work week.

Communication Plan

• We are going to talk proactively and actually about our new schedule and our causes for attempting the four-day work week.
• Earlier than the beginning of the trial, we’ll talk our new schedule to all constituents via e mail.
• We are going to share our schedule in e mail signatures and on our web site.
• We are going to invite connections for additional discussions.

Checking In With Every Different

• We are going to use common pulse examine surveys and workers conferences to grasp how workers are coping with this modification.
• Supervisors will help direct experiences by checking in on workloads.

Workplans and Assembly Schedules

All groups will establish alternatives to consolidate, get rid of, or modify standing conferences.

• Groups will overview workplans and regulate timelines to accommodate the transition to a four-day work week.
• Groups are invited to prioritize duties, rethink inside deadlines, and consolidate initiatives and efforts, the place potential.
• We are going to make our conferences extra environment friendly by setting agendas and expectations about what kind of participation is required upfront (ex: dialogue, working assembly, brainstorm, check-in, and many others.)

HR and Finance Changes

• Through the trial interval, we won’t regulate paid day off (PTO) accruals.
• If we undertake the four-day work week completely, we’ll cut back PTO accruals and maximums by 20%.
• We won’t change our bi-weekly pay schedule (Fridays), however we’ll shift deadlines for timesheets in order that our finance and HR groups can absolutely undertake the four-day work week.
• We won’t redefine full-time employment in our insurance policies throughout the trial.
• If we undertake the four-day work week completely, we’ll redefine full-time employment and part-time employment primarily based on the brand new schedule.
• If we rent hourly staff sooner or later, we’ll enhance their hourly fee to present them an identical profit.

Standards for Determination

• We are going to base our resolution about whether or not to proceed the four-day workweek on:
  • Workers suggestions about whether or not or not that is working
  • The affect of the schedule on productiveness, measured by the outcomes we obtain
  • The group response and whether or not or not there are complaints or difficulties connecting with us because of the four-day work week.

Construct Your Personal Trial Plan

Earlier than implementing a four-day work week, it’s essential to think about all facets of your group and the way this modification would possibly have an effect on your crew and the way you use.

Communications Plan

• How will we talk this modification to our constituents and stakeholders?
• What reactions can we anticipate from workers, constituents, the Board of Administrators, or different stakeholders relating to this modification?
• How will we reply to inquiries or considerations about our schedule?

Checking in with one another

• How will we help workers via this transition?
• How will we collect suggestions to know if the 4 day work week is working for us?
• What do supervisors must help their groups?

Workplans and Assembly Schedules

• What deadlines might want to shift in a 4 day work week?
• How will we regulate workloads to make it possible for high priorities are possible throughout the trial?
• Will we have to audit and regulate our assembly schedule?

HR and Finance

• Do our payroll or accounts payable schedules want to alter?
• What insurance policies would want adjustment if this mannequin had been adopted long-term?
• Do we have now hourly staff? If that’s the case, how will we have to regulate their compensation to make sure that there isn’t a change to their take house pay because of the trial?

Standards for Determination

• How and when will we decide if the four-day work week is profitable for our group?
• What standards will information our resolution to make the trial everlasting?

Strive it for your self

Obtain our listing of inquiries to ask as you construct your trial, or reference Arts Midwest’s plan for inspiration as you arrange your individual four-day work week.

Construct Your Personal Plan Obtain Arts Midwest’s Plan

Different Sources We Suggest:

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Previously Revealed on artsmidwest.org with Inventive Commons License

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