Things people ask about the 4 day week
Myth-busting FAQs
As another month passes by, the 4 day week continues to gain momentum. In the past few weeks alone:
a new 4 day pilot programme has begun in the US and Canada;
encouraging results have emerged from Atom Bank’s year-long trial, demonstrating increases in employee engagement, customer service scores and business productivity;
Unilever and a UK local authority have announced that they will conduct their own 4 day trials; and
the first ever parliamentary bill for a 4 day working week has been presented to the House of Commons (the transcript of the motion is available here, if you’re curious to see how it went).
The list goes on. I was interviewed about my 4 day week for a podcast and also discussed it as part of a “hot topics” panel at a conference for future lawyers. There is so much interest that I’ve gathered a collection of questions (and misconceptions) that I find myself addressing on a regular basis. So let’s dive straight in with the myth-busting FAQs.
How on Earth can a lawyer work a 4 day week? Aren’t you all busy billing 2000+ hours a year?
This is the question that prompted me to create this newsletter, and it’s one that definitely can’t be answered in a short FAQ-style response. I have many thoughts about how the 4 day week could work in the legal sector, but for now I’ll say that visibility matters: the more lawyers we see working a 4 day week, the more chance there is of broader adoption for those who want to do so. I managed to work a successful – but not perfect – 4 day week in a law firm (where the business model depends on productivity being measured in minutes and hours) and now in the fast-paced technology sector where turnaround time is a driver of value. If I can do it, then others can.
I always find it impossible to achieve the same output when there’s a short working week due to a public holiday, or when I’m catching up after time off. Won’t a 4 day week be really stressful?
As I argued in last month’s post, a long-term 4 day week is an operating model, which means it can’t be directly compared to a one-off short working week. In order to build a system that enables you to achieve the same productivity in 4 days, you’re forced to address the factors that would otherwise make a 4 day week stressful: delivering what you’re paid to deliver, measuring your output, using your time effectively, managing your energy to sustain performance and (whisper it) minimising procrastination. You’re not just subtracting working days, you’re optimising your working practices so that you can achieve your objectives in the time available.
I’m reminded of this fascinating article about surgeons at a London hospital performing a week’s worth of operations in a single day. This feat took 2 months to plan and prepare for, but has generated a system that, if repeated over time, could completely eliminate waiting lists for that particular surgical procedure. Even with the best will in the world, this output could never have been achieved by simply showing up at the hospital one day and attempting to speed through eight surgeries. The team involved needed both a plan and a system. There’s a lot of food for thought in this, and it demonstrates quite nicely why a one-off 4 day week is inherently more stressful than a long-term, repeatable arrangement.
Won’t some employers try to use the 4 day week principles to push for unreasonable levels of productivity in 5 days?
Whenever I’m asked this question, my mind inevitably turns to elite athletes and performance coaching. Although it feels faintly ridiculous to compare the mostly sedentary working life of a lawyer with the training schedule of an Olympic sprinter, it’s obvious that high performance is unsustainable without building in some form of break. The intensity of the sprint needs to be matched by focused recovery time.
Assuming you are trying to achieve the same or greater output, working 4 days can feel more intense than working 5 days (and coincidentally the innovative surgical system I mentioned further above is called the “High Intensity Theatre list”). There just isn’t time to waste when your focus is on optimising for productivity, and the reality is that this increased intensity is difficult to sustain over 5 days.
You might be familiar with the phenomenon known as Parkinson’s Law, which states that work expands to fill the time available. My theory is that in switching back to 5 days, lower-value tasks, distractions and inefficiencies would begin to creep back in and there would come a tipping point where you’d lose the productivity gains altogether. Beyond that tipping point, the employee might as well have achieved the same output in 4 days, and both employer and employee might as well have benefited from the additional non-working time. (For the employer, these benefits include factors such as reduced premises costs, increased motivation and better staff retention.)
I don’t have children. What would I even do with an additional non-working day?
There’s a misconception that the 4 day week is simply a flexible working arrangement for parents. While parents certainly stand to gain in several ways (from increased time for family commitments to reduced childcare costs), the 4 day week is for everyone.
You’re potentially getting 40-50 days back per year and, with them, a significant opportunity to rest, spend time with friends and family, take up new hobbies, volunteer, serve on a board, start a business, do a training course, learn new skills and more. If you’re fortunate enough to secure a 4 day arrangement with no loss of pay (i.e. you receive 5 days’ pay on the understanding that you will achieve full productivity), then reduced income is not even a factor.
For me, one of the biggest benefits of working 4 days has been the breathing space it creates in an otherwise busy week, giving me the opportunity to not only do my “day job” more efficiently, but also to pursue other passions and interests.
How would I pitch this to my employer? I just don’t think they’d even consider it.
This is partly about creating a compelling business case to present to your employer, but it’s also about ensuring that you’re fully in tune with the “4 day mindset”, as I described in a previous post. Before you even make a start on a business case, you have to be willing to go against the grain, define the purpose of your role, think creatively, and figure out how to strike the fine balance between boundaries and flexibility. If any of these elements are missing, you’re not putting yourself in the best position to convince your employer that the 4 day week is a viable arrangement (whether on an individual basis or as a wider initiative).
Once you’ve worked on your mindset, you’ll need to articulate how the 4 day week addresses the needs and objectives of your employer. I often find that would-be 4 dayers are too focused on the benefits to the individual, or are not sure where to start in helping their employer to understand the business benefits. My top tip is to be strategic and try to anticipate – and address – the particular complexities for your role, workload, colleagues and department, as well as bringing out the positive aspects of the arrangement.
Surely it makes more sense to simply offer everyone complete flexibility in how, where and when they work? Why do we need to mandate a 4 day week?
Unless you work in an industry that requires zero collaboration among colleagues, total flexibility for everyone, all of the time, is a nightmare to plan for. If you’re constantly having to navigate multiple working schedules, then there is a real risk of creating duplication, inefficiencies, customer/client confusion, increased stress levels and, ultimately, lower productivity. There will always be someone catching up on what they missed at that meeting, and colleagues will have fewer overlapping working days to collaborate with each other.
To my mind, it makes sense to create a structure that at least puts participants on the same playing field, and then gives them the autonomy to figure out how to deliver their output. The 4 day week does not necessarily need to involve everyone taking the same non-working day (or even everyone working 4 days), but it does make it easier to embed effective ways of working than the free-for-all of total flexibility.
That’s all for this month. Next time I’ll be reflecting on the role of trust in the 4 day week, and hopefully we’ll have some of the final results of the UK pilot. Until then, please feel free to share or like this post and join the discussion by commenting.
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.