A MHR Experiment: The 4-Day Work Week
Starting March 21st, the Melbourne HR team will be conducting an experiment to assess the efficacy of a 4-day working week. With promising results from studies overseas, we will be testing to see how this new work structure impacts productivity, employee engagement and employee wellbeing, and if the 4-day week truly is the way of the future.
So, before the experiment begins, let’s take a look at the current standard work hours across the globe, and how our work practices will change.
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A look inside Melbourne HR
Melbourne HR has now been in operation for over 8 years (time flies!), with 5 employees, over 20 ongoing client partnerships, and a rotation of HR projects across a wide range of industries.
But it didn’t start that way. When MHR first opened it was just me on my own handling operations. I soon added my first employee, which forced me to ask myself the perennial question “Where do I find an office?”.
In the end, I decided against it. I didn’t really see the point. We had cloud-based systems for everything, and being a new company, we had no legacy systems to abide by. A survey of staff always returned the same results – they were thankful to have the extra time at home. So, we continued to work remotely, and to this day, we still run an office-less structure.
Of course, there is always a need for some in-person time to help build culture and relationships. Every week, we spend time at client locations, and also meet as a team for a few hours of collaborative working. We also try to organise lunches and activities for team building purposes, as often as we can. The rest of our contact time is virtual and suits our style of work really well.
Compared to other businesses in our industry, I’ve always felt that our working arrangements were ahead of the curve (particularly around wasted commuting time), and a global pandemic proved me mostly right – although I have become a strong advocate for having some planned in-person time with your team each week.
So, it’s now 2022, and I find myself asking what other initiatives we can try, learn from, and report back to our clients. I admit to sitting pretty firmly on the more pragmatic side of HR, and believe nothing should be done just because it is “in trend” or without well thought-out reasoning. And most importantly, it must have a commercially acceptable end point.
And that brings us to the 4-day working week. I had been toying with the idea for years, believing that it was potentially doable. It was only once I was presented with the studies/trials abroad that I became convinced that it was not only doable, but could actually contribute to business success and productivity.
But before we launch into the details of our experiment, let’s take a look at what the standard working week looks like around the world.
Global Context
Currently, the standard working hours around the globe is 38 hours (extending to 44 hours in some countries), typically completed across 9am-5pm, Monday to Friday. There are exceptions though, France has a 35-hour working week which was enshrined in law during 2000. On the other end of the spectrum, North Korean labour camps have a rumoured 112 hour working week.
Bringing it back to home soil – in Australia we have a 38-hour week, plus ‘reasonable’ overtime.
Background to the 4-day working week
In most literature about the 4-day working week, businesses have experimented with reducing total hours of work, whilst retaining wages at their current level.
This has been met with mixed results. A prime example is the study with Swedish nurses, where subjective measures were better, but it was not economically feasible to continue the new employment initiative and therefore it discontinued.
Alternatively, other businesses have compressed the working week into 4 days – that’s 9.5 hours of work in a day across 4 days.
MHR is going to combine the two concepts. We will be attempting 9 hours per day, totalling a 36 hour week.
The Melbourne HR Experiment
The more I investigated the 4-day work week research, the more I agreed we could make this new format work. Our quietest day of the week is Monday, and most of our work is time of day insensitive (it is time sensitive, but can mostly be completed at any time of the day). We don’t serve customers in a shop or bar, so we don’t have to permanently staff any location or desk. The flexible nature of the business would allow us to make these changes without great disruption to our team or clients.
So, it was decided as a team and a plan for this experiment has been developed.
Melbourne HR will condense the usual 5-day working week (Mon-Fri, 9am-5pm) into a 4-day working week (Tues-Fri, 7.30am-5.15pm). We will structure each working day into 3x 3-hour ‘sprints’, with two unpaid breaks (15 minutes and 30 minutes) after the first and second sprint, respectively.
The experiment will run for 6-weeks as a trial, with the genuine intent for this structure to continue long-term. Staff will be surveyed before, during and after the trial to gather insight into measures of productivity, work-life balance, stress and overall satisfaction. Clients will also be contacted for their thoughts, and if they noticed any changes during the weeks.
MHR Christmas Party
So, what are we expecting to see from this trial? Overall, I am expecting to see work-life balance improve significantly amongst staff, with employees having the opportunity to spend more time on hobbies, interests and creating ‘better quality’ weekends. I’m also expecting clients to benefit from the experiment, with the extended contact hours allowing both blue-collar and white-collar businesses to have access to our support when they need it.
These positives don’t come without their challenges, however - the biggest being productivity. A 9-hour day starting at 7:30am is longer and earlier than the usual 9am-5pm, and in order for this experiment to be a success, employees will not only need to maintain productivity levels, but increase their productivity across a compressed and slightly reduced 36-hour week. This is closely related to the challenge of fatigue, with the possibility of employees feeling more tired at the end of the longer day and stressed as they try to keep up with the shorter week.
In order to manage these challenges, regimented breaks will be put in place to ensure all staff have time to reset before the next sprint. Whether these breaks are enough, only time will tell.
The entire Melbourne HR team are very excited to give this experiment a go, and the pragmatist in me is excited to go through the results and evaluate its success.
I will provide updates as we go along the experiment and publish the results for you to determine whether your business could also attempt a 4-day working week.
Wish us luck!
CONTACT MELBOURNE HR
If you need assistance restructuring your workforce for efficiency, contact Melbourne HR for a free consultation and quote.
PHONE: 1300 784 687
David Simpson is the Founder and Managing Director of Melbourne HR
Edited by Nicole Torrington, Marketing Manager at Melbourne HR.
