Our experiment is over. Is the four-day workweek here to stay?
It’s September (how?!), and if you’ve been following along for the last few months, you might know what that means . . .
Our four-day workweek experiment has officially come to an end, and now, it’s time to make our big decision.
In case you have no idea what I’m talking about, let me get you up to speed: This summer—in the months of June, July, and August—our team tried out the four-day workweek.
Even though we have unlimited PTO and total control over our schedules (and technically, any one of us could have chosen a four-day workweek at any point in time), I was curious about what might shift for our culture and our team if we committed to a company-wide four-day workweek.
As a leader, I feel an immense responsibility to ensure I’m creating a culture where everyone on my team can have work-life harmony and where work works with life, and I actually want to see my team take more time off.
(In case you want to learn more about my thought process going into the experiment and our learnings in the early weeks of testing it out, I’ve written about it a couple of times. I also encourage you to check out this post and this one.)
I knew that this experiment would teach us a lot, so I promised to give a final update about what we learned and whether the four-day workweek is here to stay. So, here we are!
I decided our team’s most recent quarterly review was the perfect place to have this conversation and make our decision. It was at the end of July, and we were more than halfway through the experiment. I asked each person to share how it felt to them so far, what was working and what wasn’t, and whether they wanted to keep it going and make it officially official.
While I knew how I felt (spoiler alert: I loved it so much that I had already blocked off one day a week in my calendar through December), I wanted to make sure I stayed neutral in the conversation. I wanted to create a space where each person could be honest in sharing their feedback, and then, we could decide as a team where to go from there.
You will probably not be surprised to learn that every single person loved the four-day workweek experiment and wanted to make it permanent—but their feedback as to why was a surprise to me.
What our team valued most about our experiment is the freedom to choose the day they wanted to take off every week.
In most organizations that I’ve read about or worked with that are trying the four-day workweek, the organization has a set day that everyone takes off. It’s usually the same day every week.
Ours kind of started like that: We initially called it Summer Fridays, and the idea was we would take off every Friday for three months. But then, we quickly recognized that during some weeks, Fridays weren’t the ideal days to take off. That was often true for me specifically because I can’t always control what day a speaking event lands on.
We had added a small disclaimer to our experiment that I didn’t realize would be so important in the end: We decided that each person could choose the day that worked best for them to take off each week. And if they didn’t want to take a day off that week, they could take two the next.
My realization was that things change from week to week, and I didn’t want this to be stressful for anyone, myself included. I wanted everyone to have the flexibility to choose the day that worked best for them given their capacity and priorities outside of work. For example, I can remember one time in particular when someone chose to be off on a Thursday so that she could be with her mom on her birthday, and I loved that.
So the freedom to choose was certainly the highlight for our team, and there was another surprise that came up in our discussion: The team shared that because it was an official company-wide decision, they felt more empowered to take an extra day off.
Feedback like this is always so surprising to me because we are a company that not only has unlimited PTO, but we also take six Break Weeks per year, where we close our company and we all take time off at the same time. Not only that, but I also take a lot of time off myself. (I just took five weeks off and wrote about it here!).
Between my own example and making decisions like implementing Break Weeks, history shows that I have sent a clear message to the team that taking time off matters. These are intentional actions that I assumed would give the team permission to do the same for themselves. But even with all that, the team shared that having an “official” four-day workweek is what made it okay to take that extra time off for themselves. They each said that it feels different to take an extra day off every week when you know that everyone else is doing it, too. It removes the guilt and anxiety we can sometimes feel about taking time off while everyone else is working.
It reinforced a really important leadership lesson that I’ve learned before: It’s simply not enough to have a culture of freedom and great benefits. If we want something to come to life in our culture, we have to create a structure and system of accountability for it, which is exactly what happened here. It’s not enough to encourage; we must walk the talk.
The best part is that when we walk our talk in our culture, it usually ends up being a huge win for the business, too: Without a doubt, the four-day workweek helped us be more productive. We enjoy having an extra day to ourselves every week, so it motivates us to get more done within the four working days.
It also doesn't feel like anyone is stretching themselves too thin or trying to cram five days’ worth of work into four days; it just feels as if everyone has more energy and inspiration. Our company still feels very calm.
With everyone choosing to take off different days throughout the week, we had to become even more proactive about our communication. We were already good communicators, but this experiment caused us to get even more intentional about it so that we didn’t miss a beat. Our collaboration has never been better because we have to be on the same page about setting deadlines that align with our boundaries.
The four-day workweek is here to stay for Team KH! And so is the freedom and flexibility for each person to choose how to best structure it.
I'm so excited to introduce this as a formal part of our culture and see what else we can learn from it. I encourage any organization that wants to create more work-life harmony to experiment with the four-day workweek, learn from it, have a conversation as a team, and figure out your own unique approach. What works for one certainly won't work for all, but one thing is for sure: Figuring this out is critical when it comes to the future of work and building cultures where people thrive and feel engaged.
What do you think about the four-day workweek? Have you tried it? Do you see a need for more flexibility and freedom when it comes to the future of work? Did this post spark ideas for you? Hit “reply” and tell us everything!
Big hugs,
