Four-day weeks don’t work for everyone. Here are five other ways to support your people

CEOs navigating unpredictable commercial conditions are also being met with the prospect of transitioning to a four-day work week, with an ANZ-coordinated six-month pilot recently launched.

Employees and team leaders alike are debating the pros and cons of this trend.

The feedback from some employees has focused on how the move will be a boost to productivity and wellbeing. Meanwhile, companies wait anxiously to see if the shift in hours will cause a drop in commercial outputs. It has been well documented that employees maintain better discipline when they have a better work/life balance, but what happens when that requires more from a company than just a shift in their work hours?

The reality, also well documented, is that not every industry can participate fairly in a four-day-a-week cycle, and not all team members will ensure that they are being productive enough to prevent excess workloads falling unequally across the team. Anyone who has worked in a group — from high school projects to commercial projects — is familiar with the fear of being the one who has to carry the weight of the team.

The stakes have never been higher for companies to create an environment where people actually can achieve their full potential.

The momentum at the beginning of this four-day a week trial and the reports around it – much like trying to achieve equality at a board level – could be a very different story for those facing the day-to-day grind of trying to achieve 100% productivity levels in 80% of your work time.

My company has not always been great. At times we’ve had the wrong people leading client outcomes, clients we couldn’t be effective for, and work quality we couldn’t be proud of. However, in the past 18 months, I have seen rapid growth in the business around the calibre of talent we attract, the quality of work we deliver for clients and the morale of the team, because we have shifted mindsets around how we view our employees. Instead of hoping that the work they will deliver is worth their pay cheque, we have flipped this around and asked: what environment do they need to thrive?

Every organisation is different depending on size, growth trajectory and industry. While I am open to four-day work weeks for my company, I am unsure if there is a one-size-fits-all approach that maintains quality levels, and eventually this shift might not cut it. It may not necessarily be the band-aid solution to managing burn out, talent retention and productivity levels we hope, at least not at every organisation.

So, I see things slightly differently around what we can do for our people. For our company, this is both a commitment and a constant work in progress as we ourselves evolve and mature.

Here are five things we are focusing on instead.

1. Be intolerant of clients who are a bad fit

I used to agonise over any client loss, and would always blame myself and my team. It didn’t make anyone feel good about their role or about their future clients, and it definitely didn’t support team members or ensure they bought their best to the table.

I still agonise, but in a different way. I ask the question: ‘Did we drop the ball or were they the wrong fit?’ Not every commercial relationship is a good fit, but tolerating shitty clients is 100% in the hands of the C-suite.

To be clear, I don’t mean blaming the client if our work wasn’t great or the deliverables weren’t met. I am talking about clients who simply treat the team poorly, are never happy with the wins, don’t know what they want, always find a reason to be unhappy, or worse, solely blame their commercial partners when their own business cannot meet the goals for which they had hoped.

I have seen my team go into client meetings really excited about growth and achievements, only for the client to sit back and bring up a new milestone that has never previously been agreed to (but their sister’s boyfriend’s cousin said it was a good idea) and lament how the client manager was terrible for not having thought of it. It is deflating, it’s toxic, and CEOs need to protect their people from it.

2. Invest in their growth, even if it means they leave you for better opportunities

A clear growth trajectory, and the feeling that one matters to the company, has been shown to play an increasingly critical role in an employee’s desire to stay in their position.

This is slightly more nuanced than just arranging additional courses or training. It’s actually more about showcasing that the company identifies potential in the individual, and will invest in them for the betterment of both the company and their own personal growth. This could be through mentoring programs, formal and informal education, as well as exposing the individual to talent and opportunities that inspire them.

The benefits from creating a culture where people feel valued, and that there is room to grow, outweigh the risk of an individual taking all that value and moving to a competitor. Keeping your people small keeps your company small.

3. Communicate your vision as more than just slogans

I used to make the mistake of communicating client outcomes and financial expectations to staff without contextualising them within the overall company vision.

What was I trying to build and why should they have cared? What sort of company did we want to be in the next 12 months versus the next three years? I would gloss over that, mostly anxious around the problems of today. It created a culture of people focusing only on this week, not the big picture. The more I shared my actual vision outside of the board room, and with the team across all roles, the more I saw people stand up and take responsibility. Because they realised that they were building something with me.

I was buoyed by a recent comment from a team member who said to a new hire: “You will love it here, we are building something really special”. Compared to a few years ago, when a staff member left due to the pressure of constant deliverables with minimal internal support, I felt we had matured.

4. Understand your employees are not their job

This really is foundational to why the four-day work week concept exists, but it goes beyond that. It used to be a battle cry that a company was like a family, but that is only really true for the founders and a select few. We aren’t a family, but we are a team. We go into battle as one every day.

We found that our staff feel more supported at work when we supported their lives outside of their employment contracts. For us, that meant we implemented four additional long weekends a year, and offered to cover gym, yoga, and therapy costs (with any provider they choose) to support mental and physical health as well as stress management. We extended our leave policies beyond just sick, annual, domestic violence and mental health leave. We introduced Pawternity leave, where staff could have paid leave if they had a sick pet, or had adopted a new animal and needed time to acclimatise with it. We also offer gender affirmation leave and additional family leave on top of NES endorsed paid leave each year – for anything family related, no questions asked.

We are still trying to get this right, and we will always need to evolve as we grow, but it’s vital to the board that we don’t just say we respect our employees’ personal lives but actually prove it.

5. Trust them to not take advantage of workplace benefits

One of the biggest concerns the C-suite raises when offering a four-day work week, or additional benefits, is that employers will take advantage of it and the costs will be difficult to manage. I believe that with the right checks and balances in place this shouldn’t be the problem it initially poses.

As an example, Inventium was progressive with an unlimited leave policy but back in 2018 it found that the average amount of leave taken was only around 24 days. Risk management needs to be in place around how leave policies and additional perks are rolled out, but I believe if your staff feel you are doing the best thing by them, they too will try to do the best thing by the company.

Checks and balances include workplace KPIs being in place, ongoing feedback loops and team transparency, so that your company can identify quickly if someone is unlikely to do the right thing. I have also found that when clear KPIs are in place with the resources to execute, those who cannot deliver them don’t stay too long. That being said, some people just do the wrong thing, and some won’t care about the company they work for. But understanding that this is in the minority and can be easily identified will help you see your people’s potential much clearer.

No quick fix

Building a company is tough. It’s unrelenting and not for the fainthearted, but we need to have higher standards for our people and ourselves as CEOs. Life is too short to work for shitty bosses, shitty clients, or with shitty team members who don’t care.

I think that we should view our companies as a constant work in progress, where the wellbeing of our team is the most critical investment we make. Whether we offer a four-day work week or other progressive benefits, it’s clear that there are no band-aid fixes – only a tailored response to how you are building out your company and supporting those in the trenches with you.