Our four-day workweek experiment
I kicked off our first meeting of 2024 by surprising my team with something huge: We’re going to experiment with a four-day workweek this summer. During June, July, and August, we will close our business every week on Friday for “Summer Friday,” and everyone will have the day off!
You may have read about this on my social media, but I want to back up a bit and talk about how I came to this decision and why I think experimenting with a four-day workweek is important for the future.
Years ago, we implemented an unlimited paid time off policy on our team. I thought the amount of time off people took would increase a ton, but as it turned out, people actually took less time off. We’re a small, lean team, and I think everyone is conscious of the impact that taking time off has on others. I also think that moving to an unlimited policy removed the sense of urgency because the days no longer ran out.
The fact that our team didn’t take advantage of the new policy taught me that it’s not enough to simply roll out a benefit. If we really care about our people, then as leaders, we have to hold them accountable to taking advantage of it.
So that’s why I implemented Break Weeks. Every year, we close our business for a total of six weeks: one week every quarter and then three weeks at the end of December/beginning of January. Of course, I hoped that our team would take time off beyond that, but this way, I could guarantee that each person was taking at least six weeks off a year.
Break Weeks have been super powerful for us. Because we are all off at the same time, it allows us to disconnect completely. We don’t feel the pressure that can come from being the only one off while everyone else is working. We make these breaks work by proactively communicating with our clients and blocking the dates on the calendar a year in advance so that we don’t book events or meetings on those days.
Our team really treasures and enjoys Break Weeks—as do I—but I had this moment over our long holiday break where I found myself wishing for more. I want more time to enjoy my life. I want more time for my priorities outside of work. I want more work-life harmony, more freedom, more flexibility. And if I felt this way, I figured that my team did, too. That’s what got me thinking about the four-day workweek.
I did the math: Six weeks off out of 52 is only 11.5% of the year. It’s definitely something, and yes, it’s more than a lot of organizations out there. But I want more for us. I feel an immense responsibility to ensure that those on my team are able to prioritize their lives outside of work. I don’t want us—or our families—to ever resent our work because it prevented us from doing things that matter to us. I want to make sure that my team and I can achieve true work-life harmony. And so, that’s why I want to take this next step and experiment with the four-day workweek.
You might be wondering why we haven’t tried this before. The four-day workweek isn’t new; plenty of organizations have implemented it with great success. So why not us?
I’ve actually brought it up to the team several times. In the past, our discussions always came down to the fact that we already have so much flexibility and that anyone can have a four-day workweek any time they desire. My schedule also made it tough to imagine. The team would have an easier time implementing a four-day workweek than I would. It might be hard to find a day that could be a consistent day off for all of us each week, so we never really did anything with it. We left it that each person is empowered to work when and however they want and that if someone wanted a four-day workweek, they could take it.
But over the long break, I reflected on the fact that I’m not really seeing anyone on my team consistently take four-day workweeks—and I’m not, either. It reminded me of what I learned when I implemented Break Weeks: A leader’s responsibility is to create a structure that holds everyone accountable. If I really wanted to implement the four-day workweek, I would need to come with a plan to make it happen.
And so, I looked at my calendar and realized that I could take off every Friday in the months of June, July, and August (with the exception of one, where I need to travel to an event that I have already—excitedly!-–committed to). I thought it would be a great time for us to experiment as a team and then make a decision on whether it’s something we want to implement year-round.
When I announced our experiment, my team was so excited. That was an ah-ha for me: They clearly want to do this. They are empowered to do this. And even with all of that, sometimes it takes the leader saying, “Okay, we are doing this,” and making it a priority in order for it to happen. You can’t just say that you care and that you want to empower your people to do what’s best for them. As leaders, we have to walk our talk. That’s the responsibility of leadership.
Which leads me to . . .
In order to give the experiment a real chance, I know that I have to fully commit to it, too, even though that’s going to be tough. It's common for me to have events or business travel on Fridays. This is going to make me a lot more intentional about what I say yes to. As a team, we talked about how, if I do choose to do an event on a Friday this summer, I will hold myself accountable to taking a different weekday off so that I still get the benefit of working less. We discussed that if I do take an event on a Friday, no one on the team is expected to travel with me. But if someone wants to, I will also hold them accountable to taking a different weekday off.
It’s also important to note that the goal of our experiment isn't to try to cram five days’ worth of work into four days. I don’t want us to get burned out by the time we get to our longer weekend. The whole point is to create more space to enjoy our lives outside of work. I want us to have better work-life harmony and even more flexibility and freedom.
Since sharing about our experiment on my social media, I’ve gotten a ton of support. I’ve also had people warn me to be careful—that once you do something, it’s hard to take it back. I understand where they’re coming from, and I know the risks. It’s vulnerable to try something big like this. I know that it might not work out. But I also know that we will figure it out together. We will figure out a way to make it our own and do it in the way that works best for us. And most importantly: If we never try, we’ll never know.
There’s a good amount of pushback when it comes to implementing the four-day workweek on a broader scale, especially here in the U.S., and I get it. My team and I are lucky to be in the kind of business where this kind of experiment is relatively simple for us to pull off, but I know it’s not like that for every organization. It can be hard to imagine what it could look like in some lines of work. Some leaders might even fear that productivity will go down because people will use it as an excuse to do less. But here are a couple examples that might inspire a different way to look at it:
I got a message from someone on Instagram who told me that her husband’s company, which is a contractor for NASA, splits its team in order to best serve their client while still cutting back on hours. She said they have A and B schedules for their four-day workweeks, which keeps his team happy enough that when a crisis happens, they don’t mind logging into work on their off days to help.
I recently read about a police department in Colorado that went from a 40- to a 32-hour workweek mostly by cutting out unnecessary meetings. They kept the same pay and benefits, and preliminary results showed it was "going fantastic." I love this because it shows that even in organizations that need to operate 24/7, it’s possible to make this happen. It just takes a little creativity.
THIS is the future. We know that people are looking for flexibility and freedom, and these ingredients will only become more important as we look ahead. The leaders and organizations that embrace better structures for work/life harmony and do right by their people are the ones that will thrive in the future. And I really believe that when we give to our people in this way, they will want to give to us. Not that that’s the reason we should do it; we should create these structures because we care. But if we take actions that show our people we truly care about them, they will in turn care for our organizations. I have seen it play out time and time again in my own company and in others.
It's not enough to say that we want people to take time off. It's not enough to have a paid time off policy on the books. It's not enough to say that we care about people’s lives outside of work.
The question is what are we doing to show that we mean it? What structures do we have in place that hold us accountable to truly caring for our people?
I think that considering a four-day workweek—and being willing to experiment and try together—is a wonderful place to start.
Here’s to our experiment! I’m so excited to share what we learn from it.
Big hugs,
