By Roxana Popescu, The San Diego Union-Tribune
Here is a question for the full-time workers out there.
If you added up all the minutes you squander or misallocate in a week, whether because you’re stuck on a call with a client who won’t say goodbye, or you’re sitting in another meeting that could have been an email, or tracking down your missing stapler, would that add up to an hour? Maybe five?
A San Diego nonprofit ran a pilot program using its own workers and found out.
One full work day. Eight hours. 480 minutes.
Catalyst of San Diego & Imperial Counties, a nonprofit that facilitates grantmaking to nonprofits, didn’t do this test of cutting out a workday in a vacuum. Instead, the nonprofit is part of a workplace trend that asks employees to pool together all those ill-spent minutes and seek greater efficiency at work. In exchange, they get to lop off an entire workday.
There’s one more bonus: They work four days and get paid for five.
After a pilot that lasted several months last year, Catalyst permanently adopted the four-day workweek at the start of this year and is still achieving the same impact, Megan Thomas, its president and CEO, said.
“We were not looking to do something that compromised our mission or compromised our work,” she said. “The fact is that our metrics of success have not changed, right? … And so when we go to our board or we speak to our funders, the topic is not about how many hours we work, it’s what’s the impact we’re having? … That conversation is the same as it always has been.”
Fridays are now used for sleeping, spending time with nieces or volunteering, employees said. Thursdays are the new EOW: end of the workweek. And Monday through Thursday is crunch time.
Even with the compressed workweek, employees in internal surveys said they felt less, not more, stressed at work.
“It alleviates stress throughout the whole week,” said Ashley Miller, Catalyst’s director of operations, who has been tracking employee sentiment following the schedule change through surveys.
Catalyst is one of a handful of San Diego employers who are known to have switched to a four-day workweek. They include Mixte Communications, a public relations agency, and 100Percent, a motocross gear company.
It’s hard to know how many other companies or nonprofits are doing this, since nobody tracks whether employers are switching to 32-hour weeks. It’s also impossible to know if the shift is the beginning of a groundswell or just a blip. This kind of alternate schedule is more compatible with some industries than others, and it can offer an alternative to other perks, such as working from home. It is also a compelling recruitment tool or could reward top performers, workplace consultants said.
Even though multiple pilots have shown that employees and even employers are satisfied with a four-day schedule, adoption, outside a mandate, will be slow, predicted Kate Lister, the president of Global Workplace Analytics, a San Diego-based consulting company. In 10 years, no more than 15% of employers will adopt a 32-hour workweek, she estimated.
“People don’t like to change. We’re stuck in the old ways of doing things,” Lister said. “We can’t imagine that people could be as productive or even more productive. Managers are really skeptical of that.”
Pushback also “tends to come from shareholders. It doesn’t look good.” Likewise, taxpayers might wonder, “Why is my government servant out mowing his lawn on a Friday afternoon?”
Letting people work fewer hours would require valuing other things more, she said.
“Looking more at the health and well-being of the employees — and the realization that the better their employees feel, the better they’ll be able to perform — that’s taking the long view,” she said. “Taking the short view (is) as soon as we have a down quarter, somebody’s going to point the finger at remote work and the four-day workweek.”
Working smarter, not harder
Lister shared a quip about remote work: Telework doesn’t create management problems, it reveals them.
“The same is true of the four-day workweek,” she said. “It requires a more intentional way of managing and of working.”
That intentional approach was apparent a few weeks ago at Catalyst’s office in University City, where people had gathered around a conference room table. Everyone else was focused on getting tasks done at desks. Notably absent: small talk among colleagues about fad diets and new streaming series. The number of people huddled around someone’s phone to watch TikTok reels of baby ducks dancing in the rain: zero.
Another change: Meetings are now the exception, not the default, said Miller, who led the office’s transition to the four-day workweek.
“I think part of why it was successful is that we questioned a lot of norms around work,” Miller said. “Do we need to meet this frequently? Is this deadline hard and fast? Can we move this? We empowered ourselves and one another to make the changes that we needed to make the four-day workweek work for us.”
While cutting back on meetings, they upped their use of messaging platform Slack for quick chats, and they relied more on project management software to collaborate and track progress. The nonprofit also prepared for the shift, taking steps like canceling Friday meetings, well ahead of the change.
Fewer hours, fewer meetings doesn’t translate to less value created, Miller added.
“I think we’ve increased our efficiency so much. We really haven’t drastically reduced what we do,” she said.
What if a client needs the nonprofit’s services on a Friday? Miller said people still sometimes work Fridays — just as they sometimes did Saturdays.
“Now we just have the same mindset about a Friday” as they used to about a weekend, she said.
Maryan Osman, a Catalyst employee, said the four-day workweek has led her to be more thoughtful about how she spends her time.
“Recognize that it is going to challenge your idea of what ‘productivity’ means. It also is going to really encourage you to think more detailedly and deeply about what you really want to prioritize and spend your time on, because you are going to be spending less time at work,” she said.
The nonprofit’s reasoning for adopting a short week is that charity begins at home. In working to bring change to other organizations, its leaders decided to do the same internally. Catalyst also offers a hybrid schedule, sabbaticals and clear pathways to advancement and raises.
“We really want to build a workplace that reflects the world we’re trying to build,” Thomas, the CEO, said. “We think employees who are well in their entire lives are bringing their best self to the work, and we want people to be able to do that, not just for the sake of the person, but because the work then gets better and reflects our values.”
Scaling up?
Work four days, no pay cut. Who wouldn’t like like that? Various people, it turns out.
Years ago in a stump speech, a vice president pitched a four-day workweek as a way to boost people’s standard of living. He spoke of a time in the near future when “backbreaking toil and mind-wearying tension will be left to machines and electronic devices.”
The candidate: Richard Nixon, campaigning in Colorado Springs for the reelection of Dwight Eisenhower in 1956. They won.
But the four-day workweek didn’t. For decades, it receded from the limelight. Four-day workweeks became a tool of beleaguered companies looking to save on payroll.
“VW Offers Its Workers 4-Day Week or Layoffs,” a 1993 headline reads.
The idea of working four days, getting paid five, has only garnered interest again recently. Across the world, pilot programs and proposed laws are carving a pathway for workers to do their jobs in 32 hours and get paid for 40. When Iceland broadly adopted a shorter workweek of 35 to 36 hours, down from 40, its economy far outperformed that of other European countries, and unemployment fell from about 2.5%, from 6% in 2020. Strong tourism from broad and demand for goods and services within Iceland contributed to that economic growth.
A 61-company pilot in Britain resulted in 92% of companies deciding to continue the new schedule after the program finished. Companies said productivity was maintained, while burnout and stress fell, according to 4 Day Week, a British campaign.
It has also gotten rave reviews in a pilot in Australia.
In California, two recent state assembly bills died. One would have lowered the workweek to 32 hours for large employers. The other targeted state employees.
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, the progressive icon from Vermont, introduced a bill in March that would lower the threshold at which certain employees are paid overtime to 32 hours a week, while keeping pay and benefits at their 40-hour levels. That follows legislation introduced to the House by U.S. Rep. Mark Takano, D-CA.
Four-day workweeks appeal to all generations of workers, Lister said. Four-day weeks can help even out perks in a workplace where some jobs can be done remotely, but others cannot.
“It’s actually most popular in industries with essential workers, like health care. They can do a four-day workweek, but they really can’t work from home,” she said. “One of the criticisms of the work from home is that it leaves a lot of people out. So this is kind of a beautiful complement.”
Lister said that despite workers liking extra off time and the C-suite liking the lower rates of burnout and absenteeism and the improved retention and efficiency associated with a four-day workweek, broadly adopting a shorter week in the U.S. would either take a catalyzing circumstance — how the pandemic untethered workers from their offices — or a brand name influencer, Lister said.
“When a big CEO stands up and says, This is what we did, and this is what the result was, that’s when companies will start to pay attention,” she said. “Kind of like when Jack Welch said that lean was the best thing for companies and showed the evidence. Then everybody was doing workbooks on it, and everybody became a consultant, and it became a big thing.”
Not every industry, not every worker
If workers produce as much in four days as five, that raises a question about their time management, said Phil Blair, the executive officer of ManpowerWest, a San Diego based staffing company.
“If you could do it in four days, what’s been taking you five? Why didn’t you do it before?” he said an employer could ask.
Four-day workweeks are interesting but can be impractical, he added.
“Fifty years ago we worked Saturdays,” Blair said. Dropping a workday could make sense in some circumstances, but would have to happen gradually, perhaps dropping two hours, then two more, until a day is cut. And there are challenges, he said.
One is paying for this new schedule, because shorter weeks for the same pay amount not just to more personal time, but a raise, he said.
“We want a four-day week and be paid for five. Yeah, well, how in the world are we going to do that?” Blair said. “It’s almost audacious to say ‘I want to start working 32 hours a week, but you have to still pay me for 40.”
Employers will have to charge more to afford those higher wages. Otherwise, the de facto raises will lead to bankruptcies — if prices don’t go up, he predicted.
“That’s just 101 business,” he said. “My expenses went up 20%. I was either unbelievably profitable or I’m an idiot not to raise my prices.”
A four-day schedule could work for people in creative industries like marketing or PR, who “don’t need to be in the office 40 hours a week to get brilliant ideas.” If a client pays $50,000 for a campaign, “if I come up with it in 32 hours instead of 40, bully for me,” he said. The same goes for coding. Faster workers who finish their work sooner can stop sooner.
Blair pointed to another challenge: balancing demand with staff. If businesses operate four days because staff are working less, they won’t compete with businesses open five. If, instead, they spread 32-hour workers across five days, they’ll be understaffed. Do they hire more people or forgo that business?
“I have to cover that day. I mean, it’s clear. Expenses go way up,” he said.
That’s why for manufacturing, tourism, hospitality and health care, the idea doesn’t compute, he said. You can’t bus the same number of tables in 32 hours as in 40, he said.
“We don’t have nurses on Fridays because they only work 32 hours,” he quipped.
Blair does see potential for shorter weeks, though technology and automation. “The 800-pound gorilla in the room is AI,” he said. “Can you do the same amount of work in 32 hours and bill the same amount of labor as you did at 40? Then I could pay you 40.”
He is a “big fan” of working 40 hours in four days, known as a 4-10 schedule. Likewise, of letting people work 32 hours if that suits their needs, and paying for 32 hours.
A shorter workweek for same pay could be a perk for top performers, Blair added.
“You do your 10 articles, I don’t care how many hours you work,” he said, using journalism as an example.
Lister, with Global Workplace Analytics, said nonprofits stand to benefit the most from this shorter schedule.
“They don’t have a lot to pay people,” Lister said. They’re on thin budgets, and so anything they can do to attract talent to differentiate themselves will benefit them greatly in trying to compete with other companies with the for profit sector.”
The four-day workweek helped recruit Osman, a recent hire at Catalyst. She left a job with the city of San Diego and started with the nonprofit in June, as its director of programs and learning. She found out about the short week during the interview process.
“While it wasn’t why I applied, it definitely made a difference” in her choice to take the job, she said.
In her former role, “most days I was working five to six days a week.” Now she uses her day off for more of the same: volunteering to serve the community.
“But now I get the chance to do that in my personal time, not just professional time,” Osman said. “So I really get to feel that my values and commitments are explored more expansively, because I have more time to do so in my personal time. And it still bleeds back into my work.”
The number of hours isn’t the key, for Osman. It’s working somewhere that aligns with her values, she said.
“It’s less about the four-day workweek and (more about), what are you really challenging about what work looks like, and what work culture looks like, at your organization? Maybe the flexibility benefit isn’t a four-day workweek — maybe it’s asynchronous hours or finding pathways where people can adapt and make it work from them as people and humans. This is what, I think, every industry has an opportunity to do.”