With COVID changing the way we work, has your B Corp thought about introducing a four-day workweek? Why (or why not)?
There’s plenty of evidence to say it boosts productivity, but being the first to dive in while your clients and customers are still on 5 would be a pretty big commitment!
Tell us what you think. 
We do the 4 day week and LOVE it! Yes it boosts productivity, yes it boosts health and wellbeing, our clients love that we do it too! Very happy to share what we did, how we did it, what concerned us, what worked and didn’t work… just reach out if interested
Hi Nikki,
We think it’s a super interesting proposition. Would love to know a little more about your business field, how you approached the implementation and what the best outcomes of the change has been for the employees, clients and business.
Feel free to reach out 
Aaron
At Quiip we practice “radical flexibility” which as you can guess is more radical than the 4-day week! We operate 24/7 so people can choose to work whenever they feel like it. Sleep in, perform at festivals, stay up late, go surfing, live in 20 countries in 20 months, you name it!
Only one member of our senior team (of 4) chooses to work full-time. The rest of us work approximately 3-4 days but it’s whenever it suits us, so we can “blend” (not balance) our lives with kids, study and other commitments.
The key to doing this is to have asynchronous work methods – including a focus on written work and recorded video updates. You may be alarmed to know that we have VERY FEW ZOOM CALLS!
People will be quick to think of reasons why this won’t work for their industry but we are a B2B services firm with very reputable clients who have high expectations, that are met
I really encourage companies who are making the transition to remote or blended work, to reconsider the somewhat ancient practice of 9-5. This really was born from industrial work environments, not knowledge based ones!
Love this Alison so much, love what you do too, something for us to aspire to.
I’m curious @alisonmichalk, do you have anything in place to encourage employees to switch off and avoid overwork? It’s been such a temptation when we’ve been working at home full-time this year.
Great question @Anna-Crabb! I stopped to reflect on this further.
We have a very open workplace when it comes to talking about mental health, physical health and well-being so overwork and burnout is something we are all aware of and we look out for each other. If I email my team on Fridays (my day off), they will kindly remind me to go and enjoy the day! We also talk a lot about our hobbies and what we’re getting up to outside of work – which reminds us all of our whole selves. Speaking personally I’ll go for a bushwalk, or swim or out with friends during the day, so I fit in work around it which avoids burnout because there are only so many hours left. One question I like to think about too is, “what sort of state do I want to achieve today?”. The answer is never an over-worked stressed one and when I find that happening for days in a row I re-assess.
There are two other key aspects which help at Quiip:
A lot of our hours are set by the client and we don’t go over them. For our own/internal company work, we operate leanly have very project orientated, time-bound tasks. We often estimate how much time (money) we should spend on a project and do what is possible in that timeframe. Because work expands to fill time. You can create a strategy in 50 hours or 500.
We are influenced by It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy At Work*. This book talks about developing a “non asap” culture and being a calm company. I highly recommend this read!
Here is a pic from the book which captures the concept:
Our People & Culture honcho @LaurenPiro might have other insights!
Thank you so much for sharing Alison. We’re discussing as a team today
Hi Folks - super interesting discussion, and am glad more business are stepping outside of the 9-5 model. Thanks for sharing your insight @alisonmichalk
We have a similarly flexible approach to Quiip - where each person has their own agreed core hours, but they can be done as/when needed during the pay period. Most people regularly work a 4 day week as their core.
Any hours done over core up to full-time are paid in the pay period.
When you do hours over full-time you gain lieu time.
And when you do under your core you use up the lieu time.
What is great from a human point of view, you can balance your life, kids, appointments, getting the sink fixed as needed during the week
–> with the security that you will get paid your core regardless of the hours done in a pay period.
–> and brilliantly you are recognised for all the hours spent working (which is opposite to the 9-5 model).
And what is equally great from a business point of view, when we have loads of great client work to do, we can scale up 20% with our existing people.
We are still on the journey to achieve the asynchronous work methods you discuss, but it is all work in progress.
Cheers Anna
In case you missed it last year, Unilever is trialling 4-day working week in New Zealand!
