Reflections on trust
Reflections on trust
Taking a leap of faith into a 4 day week
trust
/trʌst/ noun
1. firm belief in the reliability, truth, or ability of someone or something.
Source: Google (via Oxford Languages)
This month’s topic is the power of trust when implementing a successful 4 day working week. Although recent pilots have given us a wealth of data demonstrating the benefits of a 4 day week, making the switch is still a leap of faith. Employers and employees are putting their trust in a bargain that may not hold up when it comes to the crunch: 100% productivity, in 80% of the time, for 100% of the pay. At its heart, the 4 day week is a high-trust deal.
Thanks to Elon Musk’s Twitter 2.0 memo, we’ve all gained a better understanding of what a low-trust workplace might look and feel like. It’s probably about as far away from the 4 day mindset as you can get:
“Going forward, to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will need to be extremely hardcore. This will mean working long hours at high intensity. Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade.”
To boost his low-trust credentials, Musk has also banned working from home and expressly required employees to be in the office for at least 40 hours per week.
So why exactly is Twitter 2.0 a low-trust model? In short, it’s based on the assumption that employees cannot perform unless they commit to working in a visibly “hardcore” way. Productivity is measured in hours and perceived intensity, rather than output. The highest performers are power-napping in a sleeping bag under their desk, with the tweeted photographic evidence to prove it.
By contrast, a 4 day working week on the “100:80:100” model requires employers to trust that:
with appropriate ways of working in place, employees can and will achieve the same (or greater) productivity in less time
employee output can be a better metric of productivity than the number of hours worked
the intensity of an employee’s working day is not directly correlated with performance.
All of these ideas turn age-old thinking about work on its head.
In return, employees also have to trust that the deal will materialise from their end, and that they won’t end up working to a different, more established model that might be familiar to those who work 4 days as a part-time arrangement: cramming 5+ days into 4, for 80% of the pay.
This was one of my biggest concerns when I made the decision to transition to an 80% schedule (on 80% pay) as an individual arrangement in my prior role as a law firm associate. The first step was to trust myself to make it work, despite seeing little evidence that it could. I received plenty of well-meaning advice suggesting that a true 4 day week was impossible in a law firm environment. I spoke to several lawyers in similar roles who had experienced failed 80% schedules, leaving them feeling short-changed and unsure about how to drive their careers forward in a sustainable way. I still took the leap, choosing to believe that working fewer hours didn’t need to impact on my effectiveness as a lawyer and that I would be able to enforce boundaries where needed.
The next step was to inspire trust in others – decision-makers and colleagues – to convince them that it could work. This is where a leap of faith isn’t enough. As the definition above states, trust is a “firm belief”, which means you’re likely to need some sort of evidence to get everyone off to the right start. In my world, that meant creating a business case, putting in place a clear plan and suggesting a trial period of a few months. Generating that initial evidence made it much easier to push for my 4 day week to be a permanent arrangement, and then to transition the arrangement into a new role in a completely different environment.
The broader 4 day week movement is still in the evidence-gathering phase, with several large-scale coordinated pilots either underway or coming to an end. Most recently, there have been some encouraging results from a pilot involving 33 companies in the US and Ireland. Over a 6 month period in 2022, all 33 companies experimented with a 4 day, 32-hour work week with no reduction in pay.
Of the 27 companies that completed an end-of-pilot survey, 26 are either definitely continuing with the 4 day week or are planning to do so but haven’t made a final decision yet. The remaining company is “not yet sure”.
96.9% of participating employees want to continue the arrangement.
Revenue (weighted by company size) increased by 8.14% during the period of the trial.
A range of wellbeing metrics (including measures of stress, burnout, work/life balance and satisfaction) showed significant improvement from the beginning to the end of the trial.
Interestingly, the intensity of the employees’ working days did not increase overall: the majority saw a decline or no change in their work intensity. Those who are considering moving to a 4 day week are often concerned about the impact of compressing their work into a shorter week. This is a welcome data point to show that, with the right systems in place to create efficiencies and focus on outputs, the 4 day week can be achieved in a way that is sustainable for all.
A similar trial is coming to an end in the UK, with the results to follow in early 2023. I was also interested to read about the launch of the global Work Time Reduction Center of Excellence, which will no doubt add to the body of research in this area.
Although there are certainly still questions to be answered about how representative this early evidence-gathering might be, I am more convinced than ever that the 4 day week (or other forms of organised reduction in working hours) could generate some interesting solutions to the well-documented issues around retention, innovation, technology adoption, wellbeing and diversity that we are seeing in the legal profession.
When there is less time available, we’re forced to re-examine our ways of working, eliminate inefficiencies, transition to an output-focused mindset and embrace change. The evidence so far shows that the 4 day model, when implemented effectively, improves business outcomes on several fronts. Some of these ideas may pose a challenge to existing frameworks within the legal industry, but they also have the potential to transform the delivery of legal services and the experience of practising as a lawyer. So bring on 2023, and let’s see where the current momentum takes the 4 day week.
The fine print:
All opinions expressed in The 4 Day Lawyer are my own and not those of my current or former employers. My 4 day working week is an individual arrangement and is not associated with the UK’s 4 day working week pilot. This newsletter is an opinion piece and does not constitute legal advice or create any kind of solicitor/client relationship; please consult with a qualified professional if you need advice on a legal issue.