The 4-Day Workweek: 4 Steps for Implementation 

The Great Resignation has made retaining employees more challenging than ever.  Often the employees who do stay at an organization, burnout is a mounting challenge. Research finds that 67% of people experienced burnout more since the pandemic.  One tactic employers use to fight burnout and boost employee engagement is implementing a four-day workweek.  In the last five years, there have been many successful implementations of a four-day workweek trial by Microsoft Japan, Perpetual Guardian, and more organizations.  Additionally, a nonprofit has been established to help companies implement their own shorter workweeks via pilot program (4 Day Workweek Global).  With all this support and research, offering a four-day workweek has become a more popular and viable option for many employers.   MP’s HR experts outline critical steps employers could take to try providing their employees with better work-life balance via shorter workweeks. 

 
4 Critical Steps to Implement a 4-Day Workweek 

1. Analyze, gather feedback, and plan for a 4-day workweek. 

To successfully maintain 100 percent productivity (or higher) working fewer days a week, it’s vital to do research first.  Employers should consider setting up a survey for employees (MP has tools to assist with this task) with questions such as: 

• Would you prefer the option of working four days and 40 hours every week?  Every other week? 
• Would you prefer reduced hours over five days? 
• How could we maintain productivity if we reduced to 32 hours or 40 hours in 4 days? 
• How could we reduce client impact if we cut down to a shorter workweek? 

Leadership should also answer some key questions in this planning process: 

• How will we share ideas to improve upon processes during this trial run? 
• How will we measure productivity?  
• How will we measure employee happiness? 
• How long will we run a trial of this?  
• Will we run it with all employees or just some departments? 
• Will a shorter workweek create any compliance or legal concerns? 
• How will we ensure employees get what they need to be successful in a shorter workweek? 
• Should we run a 40-hour week in 4 days, or 32 hours in 4 days? 
• Will we reduce employees’ workloads and expectations? 
• Do we need to set firmer boundaries to prevent overworking? 
• What will we do about time we used to spend in social gatherings, like cake for birthdays? 

 
Leadership should gather the answers to these questions and employee survey data, and use it to develop a plan for piloting a 4-day workweek.  They should set goals and priorities.  For instance, is higher productivity more important, or is employee retention more important?  This will help in assessing the success of the program later. 

2. Roll out the plan for a 4-day workweek– to everyone. 

Clearly communicate the plan to pilot a shorter workweek to employees.  It’s critical to assure everyone that: 

• They won’t be laid off 
• Pay won’t be cut 
• Benefits will remain the same 
• Expectations for productivity will be decreased accordingly (if that’s true) 
   

Employers should share who will participate in this shorter workweek, especially if it’s an opt-in model, or not every department will participate.  They should outline any new processes that will be put in place for this mode of operation.  These processes may include a weekly meeting to report progress, a cap on how long meetings may take, how many people to invite to meetings, or a cap on how many meetings may be set at all.  Many employers with a four-day workweek implement new processes to increase time for employees to focus on completing work.  Lastly, employers should communicate the timelines for the pilot program and emphasize that it may not work or be implemented permanently.  Setting this expectation is critical, as it will be much easier to return to a five-day workweek if necessary.  In some cases, employers also took away employees’ rights to a shorter workweek if their performance slipped. 

In addition to employees, an organization may also decide to communicate with its clients (or some of its clients) about this schedule change.  If they do decide to communicate with clients about this change, employers could share: 

• Customer service and support expectations will still be met. 
• How they will ensure customer support availability, including staggered schedules, etc. 
• Research proving employees perform at a higher level when working a four-day workweek.  

3. Implement and assess how the 4-day workweek impacts the company. 

Employers should run the pilot program at least a few months to fully evaluate it.  Otherwise, the experiment will probably fail and waste time and resources—not to mention negatively impact employee engagement.  Throughout the pilot, employers should create channels for feedback.  They should also be receptive to feedback that comes in any form, as all of it is helpful.  Leadership should assess how the shorter workweek impacts: 

• Employee engagement and employee retention 
• Productivity 
• Quality of employees’ work 
• Client experience, retention, and satisfaction 
• Quarterly earnings, revenue, etc. 

Leadership may want to set monthly or biweekly meetings to discuss the results of these assessments.  As noted above, MP offers tools to help employers survey their team and get a pulse on how employees feel about a four-day workweek.  Leadership may choose to update the entire company on how the pilot program is going and the results they’re seeing—or not seeing. 

4. Permanently implement a 4-day workweek, or end the trial. 

At the predetermined trial end, employers should take action to continue or end it.  If employers choose to end the trial, they should try to give time for employees to transition back to a five-day workweek.  Employees may have made schedule changes to their personal lives, childcare, etc.  They may need time to update these changes for a longer workweek again.  They should communicate this change with empathy and clearly state why it can’t continue.  Leadership should also continue to be open to employee feedback and commit to nurturing a solid company culture, no matter how long the workweek is.   
 
If an organization does keep the four-day workweek, they should communicate this clearly to employees.  They may want to add language about it to their job postings and recruiting process.  They should also remain vigilant on the new processes they’ve set to ensure continued productivity and work-life balance.  If managers slip into emailing their team on days off, assigning too much work, etc., the four-day workweek will no longer be a successful or sustainable mode of operation. As with ending the pilot, employers should be committed to keeping communication open with employees and developing a strong company culture.  Even if they have a shorter workweek, employees may still have concerns about their jobs, management, policies, etc.