'A four-day week will help us attract and retain the best talent'

Could we soon work a four-day week? Martha Brennan speaks to the Irish companies trialling a longer weekend

'Managers trust their workers more now and something like a four-day work week, which may have seemed radical a few years ago, seems like a rational next step.' Picture: iStock

From working from home to early finishing times and extended leave, the past two years have brought more flexibility to the workplace than ever before. But could a shorter working week also be in our future? 

A campaign called Four Day Week is trying to make that happen by running trials of a reduced working week around the globe — and using Ireland as its first basis for research.

The initiative was rolled out here in February, with more than 17 companies signing up for the pilot. In June, more than 3,000 workers at 70 different UK companies followed suit, while smaller trials also got under way in the US. 

More programmes are planned for Canada and Australia later this year, bringing the number of companies taking part to over 170. 

By the second quarter of next year, Four Day Week is aiming to be in a position where it can offer a programme in every quarter in each timezone.

The companies taking part pay workers 100% of their wages for 80% of the time — in exchange for a commitment to maintaining at least the same level of productivity. 

Irishman Joe O'Connor heads up the global Four Day Week campaign.

While it may sound like an unusual concept to some, Four Day Week chief executive Joe O’Connor sees the move as a natural progression.

“The pandemic has been a game-changer. This was very much on the fringes of the conversation before, but now we’re seeing it at every level of organisation,” O’Connor said.

A huge number of leaders are turning to this to give them a competitive edge in terms of recruitment and retention and at the next level, managers have been forced to get much better at measuring what people actually get done rather than presentism because of remote work.

“Managers trust their workers more now and something like a four-day work week, which may have seemed radical a few years ago, seems like a rational next step.” 

Employee satisfaction

Some of the benefits of a shorter work week are higher productivity and energy levels as well as higher levels of employee satisfaction, Mr O'Connor said. 

While we will have to wait to see the independent analysis of the trials currently under way (they are being run in collaboration with researchers at UCD, Cambridge University, Oxford University, and Boston College), one Irish company taking part is already seeing the benefits.

Comit, a tech-oriented PR agency, started its six-month trial on May 1 and management is already hoping to keep the practice long-term.

Allan Chapman, managing director of PR firm Comit: 'It’s allowing people to really recharge and find a better balance and there has been no negative impact on productivity whatsoever'

"We saw an opportunity there because no one has done this in the PR industry in Ireland. We put in a lot of research and spoke to a few UK and US-based agencies that have done it and we got some strong indications that it was something that would work here,” said founder and managing director Allan Chapman. 

“The initial feedback is very positive, and I think it will help us attract and retain the best talent.” 

The company decided everyone would have Fridays off during the trial, with one person providing cover every eight weeks. 

While Comit’s clients applauded the move, its staff members were apprehensive at first. “People were kind of like ’can we do this?’ and there was maybe a worry that we’d be overworked on the other days of the week, but the impacts we've seen have been amazing,” Chapman says.

"It’s allowing people to really recharge and find a better balance and there has been no negative impact on productivity whatsoever. 

We did a survey recently and we can see that people's overall satisfaction with their work is up and it’s very positive from a cultural perspective. People feel trusted by their employer.” 

One staff member who took part in the survey wrote they feel more proactive and can get things done quicker, another said they are a lot more focused, and Chapman himself says he has really noticed the difference in his own life.

“We asked about downsides and the only thing that really came up was that someone felt they had less time to chat with colleagues. It does bring a little bit more intensity to the day, but it’s completely outweighed by having the three-day weekend,” he says.

Opportunity for Ireland

Both Chapman and O’Connor believe the idea could work in Ireland long-term and last year, the Government announced it would research the potential of a four-day working week. 

In March, the Department of Environment even said it was considering implementing a reduced week for its staff. However, O'Connor doesn’t think it will be enough to compete on a global stage.

“Ireland has really fallen behind on this. The Spanish and Scottish governments are running major national trials and the Welsh government is looking closely at it. We’re seeing initiatives in Iceland, Slovenia, and the UAE, and it was debated in the UK parliament this week,” he said.

There’s a real opportunity for Ireland here. A big part of winning the global war for talent will come down to who can offer the kind of quality of life that workers are looking for in 2022.

“I believe that we’re at the early adopter stage of the four-day work week and this is only heading in one direction. There’s a real chance that the four-day work week will become the standard over the next decade. The question is, who’s going to implement it first?"