What you need to know:

• Four-day working weeks are picking up popularity as an increasingly fruitful way of providing employees with more work/life balance in the evolving world of work both locally and globally.
• Brands including Medibank, Unilever, Inventium and House of Brand are converts to the four-day working model, citing a range of gains include reduction in sick leave, improving job satisfaction, better staff retention, positivity in the workforce and even – paradoxically - driving up productivity.
• Yet all admit initial wariness from staff around whether four-day working weeks are truly possible without a compressed work week resulting from the shortened week.
• Proponents of the model stress the importance of investing in capability building and efficiency training to make it work – and encourage leaders to role model the right behaviour.

For the last 42 years, Australian workplace laws mandated a 38-hour working week as standard for full-time employees. And for the last 100-odd years, it’s been taken for granted we do these hours Monday to Friday in a five-day working week structure standardised by Henry Ford back in the 1920s.

Not anymore. You can thank Covid, digitisation, globalisation, record levels of anxiety, demand for better work/life balance and a generational shift for that. All these forces are challenging thinking around the way we work and ushered in hybrid work models, circadian rhythm-based working hours, whopper debates on in-office versus remote staff – and a four-day working week.

Unilever and Medibank are among the largest, high-profile organisations to pilot four-day working weeks in ANZ. There are equally many smaller organisations jumping on the bandwagon including professional services firms, marketing and advertising agencies and manufacturers. Benefits they cite stretch from more productive, happier teams, to gender inclusivity, declines in absenteeism, lower staff attrition and greater job satisfaction.

The numbers back them up. According to a 2023 report of pilot four-day working week programs from not-for-profit, 4 Day Week Global, including Australian and New Zealand companies, organisations on average ranked trials 8.2 out of 10. Employees scored even higher (nine out of 10). Notably, companies saw a 44.3 per cent decline in the number of sick and personal days taken per employee per month, while resignations fell 8.6 per cent.

Productivity improved too, and 54 per cent of workers surveyed cited an increase in current work ability compared to their ‘lifetime best’. Nearly two in three (64 per cent) felt less burnt out, 38 per cent were less stressed, 49 per cent reported a decline in negative emotions, and 62 per cent felt positive emotions increased. There was also a 20-minute increase in exercise per week.

Not surprising then two-thirds of employees were more satisfied with their time while in a four-day week model. As a result, 35 per cent said they’d need at least a 26 per cent pay rise to go back to five days. One in 10 said no amount of money would induce them to go back.

While models differ, 4 Day Week Global found 96 per cent of the 760 employees responding to its survey successfully reduced work time, and 88 per cent attained one full additional day off per week. The result was 95 per cent of participating companies indicating an intention to continue the four-day working week.

Overcoming initial nerves: Medibank

That doesn’t mean four-day working weeks don’t make people jittery. Take businesses like Medibank, which commenced its six-month experiment in late 2023 with 250 customer-facing and non-customer-facing staff.

“As a leader of a marketing team, I was quite nervous about joining the four-day work week experiment,” Medibank head of financial products marketing, Charbel Harika, tells Mi3. “My team was already busy developing and delivering high-performing marketing campaigns, and if you’d asked us, we’d say we needed 20 per cent more time, not less.

“After being taken through the philosophy and experiment structure, we could easily see the opportunity to rethink our ways of working to become more efficient and free up time to focus on the things that brought us joy and our health and wellbeing.”

Harika’s team didn’t just dive straight in. The first step was reviewing where most time was being spent. That meant challenging questions around recurring meetings, reports and BAU work which had “always just existed”.

“This was an eye-opening exercise since meetings run weekly could easily be trialled fortnightly or even monthly. It was even more surprising calculating the preparation time that went into these meetings,” Harika says. “The second challenge was to interrogate our workload by ruthlessly deprioritising campaigns that had the lowest customer impact to free up more time to focus on those making a difference. Finally, we invested time in automating and streamlining processes, which not only freed up time but also brought joy by removing mundane tasks.”

Three months on, and results are outstanding according to Harika. “Cutting low-value work means we’re now focused on campaigns that drive the best customer experience and impact and allows us to double down on the best performing by optimising even further,” he claims.

“The free time also allowed the team to generate more ideas to be sized up and prioritised among other ideas in a healthy backlog. Finally, the investment in streamlining processes has increased our speed to market by removing processes we may have never challenged if not for this experiment.”

On a personal level, the best part for Harika is hearing what others get up to on their “gift” day – the term many companies use to describe the fifth day off. Common stories include spending more time with the kids, getting around to a DIY project, and taking up a course.

“We even went rock climbing one of these days, as part of a team-building activity. Personally, I’ve noticed this enhanced work-life balance has motivated and refreshed me and the team who now have more headspace to be creative and empowered to prioritise within our own capacity. As a result, marketing performance has never been better,” Harika says.

Medibank’s experiment is based on the 100:80:100 model – 100 per cent productivity in 80 per cent of the time for 100 per cent of the pay. The trial was designed with 4 Day Week Global and is being monitored and measured by Macquarie University. 

At the 11-week mark, Medibank found productivity unchanged, and teams continue to focus on addressing low-value work / red tape to create flexibility. As time goes on, more teams are accessing that fifth day.

“For our frontline team in the experiment, the average amount of sick leave or carers leave taken has reduced by two thirds of what it was prior to the trial, and well below the industry average,” Medibank group lead for people, places and sustainability, Kylie Bishop, says.

From a health and wellbeing perspective, Medibank is seeing stress levels reducing progressively in participants, “which is an important indicator to make sure we aren’t doing a compressed work week”. Bishop positions the four-day work week as one initiative sitting under a broader culture change program.

“We’re challenging long-held traditions of the workplace, including the traditional working week and what it means for all our people. Our aim is to increase flexibility for our people, while maintaining productivity, performance and customer outcomes,” Bishop says. “The idea of a four-day work week was born from employee feedback about wanting more flexibility. We know greater flexibility drives greater engagement and greater discretionary effort. That’s the key for us.”

Challenging the way we work: Unilever’s four-day working week model

Before Medibank, the enterprise poster child for embracing the four-day working week in ANZ was Unilever. The FMCG giant attributes its trial to finding ways to meet the needs of an increasingly flex- and purpose-driven workforce. It’s not the only thing the group has trialled – hybrid working structures, gender and status-neutral paid parental leave policies of 16 weeks also got a look in.

The initial four-day week trial involved 80 employees in NZ over 18 months. This was extended to 500 Australian employees in November 2022. Unilever says it’s exceeding key performance indicators, including revenue growth.  Absenteeism fell 34 per cent, work stress decreased by 33 per cent and work/life conflict tumbled 67 per cent. Meetings reduced by 3.5 hours per week and stakeholder satisfaction was maintained. The trial was independently monitored and measured by the University of Technology, Sydney. 

Essential to making the model work was leveraging existing technology. Team members were also guided in how to remove projects, processes and protocols that added less value throughout the week. Working through logistics and developing individual and team plans were required to ensure business continuity. Recommendations for changes included less frequent but more efficient meetings, less reliance on emails and adopting software like Microsoft Teams. 

“Throughout our Australian trial, we’ve supported our team with training, technology and guidance that enables them to ruthlessly prioritise. It’s been heartening to see our team members feel more empowered to create a working environment that works for both themselves and their teams, with efficiency and productivity at the core,” a Unilever spokesperson says.  

“As we did in New Zealand, we are monitoring and iterating on the Australian trial as we go, ensuring our people and the business are set up for success. We look forward to reviewing the results of the trial later this year.” 

Inventium’s flexible work journey: Balancing wellbeing with client expectations

In the consulting space, Inventium is a significant proponent of the four-day working week and consults on how to execute the model. Its kick-off point was Covid, when it lost 50 per cent of upcoming work as lockdowns hit. After shedding 50 per cent of its team, ambitions turned to “how do we make eight great – with eight people left in the team”, says head of growth and original designer of Inventium’s model, Charlotte Rush.

A six-month trial started 1 July 2020, with Fridays the delegated “gift of the fifth” day. Inventium’s conducted baseline testing via surveys, gathering feedback on job satisfaction and engagement. Rush measured uptake as well as the impact on client relationships and outcomes for six months. Inventium staff work remotely and are also encouraged to work according to their chronotype, or daily energy rhythms.

“We had the hypothesis as to whether this would ruin our connection as a team, or motivate people not to collaborate as much as they’ll be so focused on getting things done,” Rush explains. “Clients were also one of our worries – what if one of our clients calls on a Friday or something urgent happens? We had to set the expectation internally that if your client needs something urgently, it’s still a working day and you need to work. But we also made sure to communicate to clients what we were doing.”

Over the six months, only three urgent client requests came in on a Friday. But one of the biggest surprises when commencing the trial was the wariness staff exhibited around its practicality.

“I remember our CEO calling me saying people don’t seem too excited, as they were uncertain and worried about how they were going to make this work. As the worker bee, you’re not the one who can just hand work over,” Rush says. “Part of this shift is recognising you do need to support people through that change and help them work out how to change the way they work. For example, one thing I did was start to look at my goals, which at the time were six-monthly but are now 12-monthly. I broke it down into what I needed to achieve in terms of milestones, then I’d work backwards to see what I need to achieve this week to be 100 per cent productive.”

How does Inventium know if its staff are 100 per cent productive? There are lag measures, but over that six-month period the consultancy achieved its financial goals two months early, Rush says. Culture was another winner, as was the sense of empowerment.  

“Getting more intentional about measuring my productivity myself is what helped me give myself permission to take that Friday off,” Rush says. “It was always about empowering our people to make that decision themselves.”

Rush says Inventium’s staff take the gift of the fifth 70-80 per cent of the time, with many people still doing 1-2 hours of work on a Friday mainly to check-in. A virtual assistant covers a few hours each day to ensure someone is always reachable. Rush says it’s also about educating clients on what is “urgent”.

The biggest adjustment came two years in, when team changes saw the shared thread of understanding what happened in the trial and intention behind the policy come loose. “It’s about knowing this is a gift, not an entitlement. If you need to work a Friday, you’re still employed by us so you do need to work and you can’t resent us for that. We had new team members and we needed to just reiterate that messaging,” Rush says.  

As to the productivity question post-Covid, Rush agrees what is expected of employees versus three years ago is higher than ever. Yet Inventium is still doing a four-day week.

There are nuances, however. Recognition of onboarding and training staff properly is one and Inventium boasts of structured and intentional onboarding systems. New starters don’t start on the four-day week either – it’s only once they have ticked off induction checklists that the gift kicks in anywhere between 3-6 months.

“We recognise in new roles there’s so much learning to be done, you need that Friday to do the learning as well. It also gives people a chance to build a baseline of what does this role look like across five days, versus what’s the shift to four days going to look like,” Rush adds.  

Beyond Inventium, Rush says the biggest investments she’s seen other organisation making to adopt a four-day working model is training people to change how they work. It's also critical leadership exhibit the same behaviours as staff as part of the change management process.

“It has to be a process of supporting you through the change, equipping you with tools and strategies. And the role of the direct manager is so important – they’re the person checking in every week, asking if you’ve taken the gift of the fifth and if you haven’t the past three weeks, asking why not, what can I do to support you,” Rush says.

For Inventium, the payoff comes in creating a better workplace for its people with flexibility at the core. And there’s a brand image to maintain – the consultancy is the research partner behind the AFR Best Places to Work list after all.

“We look at engagement, job satisfaction, stress, self-reported productivity. We also measure those things against company goals. But to be honest, if we’re not achieving our goals, our knee-jerk reaction is not we need to get rid of the four-day week, because it provides such commitment from people,” Rush says. “To know your company trusts you and is willing to stick its neck out and take this risk is significant. It wouldn’t make sense for us to just cut it off if we weren’t achieving our financial goals.”

Rush equally dismisses the idea adopting a four-day work week as tipping the see-saw too far towards the mental and personal wellbeing of employees instead of achieving realistic commercial objectives.

“To achieve productivity and high performance, you need people who are well. It makes a lot of people uncomfortable still to have those conversations. We don’t train our managers in that and we still too often have people who become managers who are great at their jobs being promoted – when it’s a different skillset,” Rush says.

What’s more, younger people want different things, and Rush agrees stereotypically, it’s older generations that see work as more all-encompassing.

“The future of work is these younger generations. The sooner we understand what motivates them the more successful we’ll be,” she says. “For me, a four-day working week fits under the whole banner of flexibility. The beauty of flexible organisation is having those policies and initiatives that meet the needs of the majority of the population and makes them happy; it also makes people who belong to minority groups happy in many cases.”

Even so, Rush recognises employers and leaders are uncomfortable not having all the answers right now.

“That’s what leads to knee-jerk reactions like telling everyone to just come back to the office. From my experience, the majority of leaders I speak to are not saying that; they’re saying we want to make hybrid work. We want people to have a good experience in the office; but we also want to make hybrid work,” she says. “Research consistently shows flexible ways of work boost employee engagement, which makes people happier and makes people more productive.”

House of Brand: Overcoming competitive salaries, avoiding burnout

Brand research agency, House of Brand, has spent more than two years operating a four-day week model, with all 20 staff getting the same day off (Friday). CEO, Nick Palmer, is such a believer, he runs his own podcast series on the topic.

“We’re not reporting monthly numbers up to venture capitalists or a holding group, which means we had the freedom to make these decisions and give it a go,” Palmer says. “If it had been a disaster, of course, we would have rolled it back. But we didn't go into it thinking this is a trial, we went into it thinking this is the future and what we want to do.”

The accelerant was Covid and the perspective many of us gained of life being more than just work. House of Brand staff also work largely remotely. The four-day work model is covered by policy-based documentation, with employee contracts still stipulating a five-day working model. 

“Some people I know have done it because they needed productivity gains, while others are in a startup where they can't offer as competitive salaries. So it's a way of attracting staff when they can't make the benefit package,” Palmer comments. “That is all still true for us, but that wasn't the driver of it. We did it to create a better work/life balance.”

Exceptions occur and like any agency, when there are tight client turnarounds to meet. But Palmer insists those occasions are rare. Nor is he asking for compressed hours: Nine months into the rollout, a survey showed staff working no more than 30mins extra each day.

“You're still doing the same work, you are just doing it faster,” Palmer says. He is sceptical nonetheless organisations can even truly measure productivity gains, arguing “no one is very good explaining where they come from”. At House of Brand, gains he sees come from people having more energy to move faster and harder.

“They're not burnt out by 2 in the afternoon every day and just have more energy, and there are no Sunday scaries,” Palmer says. “Plus as humans we all know we work within our means. If we have four days to get something done, we're going to do it in four days, and if we've got two weeks to get it done, it will take us two weeks.

“We acknowledge you've got to go harder at it; we don't pretend it's not like that. That's quite important. I know the way we work is slightly different in that we do try to cut to the chase a bit more.”

Aiding House of Brand is the absence of org chart complexity or different disciplines across its workforce. “It's not like an ad agency where you've got creatives and account management and ops and planners and strategist who are all working at very different cadences. We're all largely doing the same job, so we don't have any of that complication or conflict or people saying well, it's okay for you, but how are we going to do our job,” Palmer says. “But we have evolved the way we've worked.”

A big win with a four-day model is as a bargaining chip for House of Brand when recruiting talent and Palmer says he’s been in far fewer “salary bun fights”.

“We are quite quickly their preferred choice. As long as we give them a salary that's not less than they're worth, this is worth a decent chunk. Before, it was always they liked you but have other offers on the table,” he says. “It's like buying a house – you chuck money on top to make sure you get that person and therefore end up overpaying for people. We're no longer having to overpay.”

Then there’s the people who benefit from having a four-day week available to them. Undoubtedly top of the list are parents gaining more time with their kids, or extra time to themselves.

“If I talk anecdotally to staff from a retention point of view, they'd have to seriously think about other opportunities given how much they’ve bought into it,” Palmer says. “For younger people, it’s one of a number of factors; the four-day week isn’t necessarily enough of a hook to keep them because it's not as valuable to them… with a young person who moves and gets a $5,000 salary bump, that's quite significant.” 

To sense check how everything is working, House of Brand anonymously surveys staff each year and Palmer says the tone has changed dramatically towards positivity. There are also intangible wins in terms of people being willing to help each other out.

“I fail to see any financial benefit in cancelling the four-day week because we believe it produces as good work at the same quality and same rate, and therefore what's the benefit of that?”

“And wouldn't the world be a better place if we were producing the same amount of stuff, but had more time off rather than constantly striving to produce more stuff, whatever that stuff is? One country [Bhutan] doesn't measure just GDP anymore, they have a Gross National Happiness Index. This is just a massive, positive reset of work.”

- This is part 3 in a series of features on the evolving world of work and how marketers, agencies, media executes and tech companies are adjusting to the new world of work. Check out part 1 of our evolving future of work series here, as well as part 2, exploring the agencies and media companies successfully getting people to return to in-person work here.