Thoughts on a four-day workweek

For the last year, I have worked at AutoUncle, which runs four-day workweeks, and I wanted to share my reflections a year in. First off, there are so many different setups called "four-day workweek" that I need to outline what it means at AutoUncle:

• We work four days a week; everybody has Friday off
• We work 8-hour days, so everybody is working fewer hours weekly than before
• Nobody went down in pay when it was initially introduced
• We still expect the same level of impact as a full-time worker, so we have to work smarter

Four-day workweek on a manager's schedule

As a VP, most of my work is on "manager schedule", connecting with my staff, contributing to meetings, etc. I have seven direct reports and six teams in my organisation, + membership of our senior leadership team, so recurring meetings take up a lot of space on my calendar (too much if you ask me!). Removing 8 hours of work a week from my available time requires profound changes to how we collaborate and work if it should not kill my deep work time. This is not a journey I am done with, but I am getting to a better place. In the beginning, this made it almost impossible for me to survive.

The truth is that you should always work on getting away from the dreadful "manager schedule" of meeting hell, four-day workweek or not, but a common theme here will be that a four-day workweek puts the pressure cooker on and forces you to improve even to stay afloat.

Four-day workweek and family

Our setup of working 8 hours four days a week is way better than what some companies do, which run 10 hours, four days a week. This would make it impossible to function as a family with two small kids (8-hour workdays are the norm here in Scandinavia). But I wish we ran five-day workweeks with six hours a day instead.

Fridays off are great. I can charge my batteries, work on projects, read and do chores, but my wife is at work (when she is not on maternity leave), and my kids are in daycare. The four days where I work are still stressful, and my energy is even a bit lower than usual due to the intensity of having to deliver 120% every day. I wish I could work from 8-14 five days a week, that would give me an hour of me time, a workout, read a book, do some chores, and then still pick up my kids an hour earlier than today with a fully charged battery and a better version of myself.

Four-day workweek and performance management

As already mentioned, a four-day workweek clearly focuses on everything that does not work, from a manager's schedule to inefficient processes, but the area that really stands out for us on the leadership team is employee performance.

People not in performance will stand out from day one, but you must develop your performance management to handle it under a four-day workweek; delivering 120% four days a week is not for everybody. An individual can easily be a great performer under a typical five-day workweek, but when you change to four days and insist on 120% performance, then cracks will show.

Your entire team will perform better when you get through those performance issues. I am not a fan of A vs. B players, but a four-day workweek in an ambitious company is only for A players.

Four-day workweek and hiring

Hiring is undoubtedly easier when you run a four-day workweek, but like so many other attractive perks, it's equally important to ensure that candidates don't join only because of the perk. We need a team of people who want to work hard and play hard. Our data shows that a four-day workweek attracts candidates with kids, making AutoUncle the place I have worked with most people with kids.

But what about working outside the hours?

Four-day workweeks are just like five-day weeks. If you are behind or motivated, you sit down on the weekend or evening to catch up on work. As an ambitious company, we don't force you to stop working, but we try to set the best default guardrails so that you come to work every day motivated and energised.

Would I run four-day workweeks in my own company?

No, but I would run 32-hour workweeks instead of 37 hours. The reduced total hours of work a week is a clear source of a better life for everybody at AutoUncle, but I would like to spread the hours out over five days to pick my kids up earlier and not burn out every day. I can't do more than 6-7 productive hours a day, so why try every day to squash the last drops of productivity out of me?

Advice if you introduce four-day workweeks

Don't expect to be able to track the impact in numbers

We have tried hard to measure the impact of four-day workweeks, but it's tough across work disciplines, outside factors affecting the KPIs, etc. Don't try. Commit to trying it for a period of time and decide on gut feel and input from the team.

Fix performance before implementing four-day workweeks.

If you don't have a strong performance culture today and work hard to ensure your team is at their best, start here. Good to Great is an excellent first read.

Commit for a year first, then fully commit.

It's tough to commit permanently to a four-day workweek, so commit for a year, then check in and make the permanent decision. You should not leave your staff in limbo on something so important to their life structure. You will have team members who have designed their lives around it, so the impact on change is massive.

Be upfront with your expectations

Four-day workweek is not an excuse for not kicking ass. It's a belief that performance will go up, so don't ask people not to work outside the 32 hours, but like always, check in with your team and make sure that they dont work themself down doing off-time.