5 Methods to Keep Productiveness When Switching To a 4-Day Workweek

The four-day workweek presents many benefits to employers and workers, however decreasing the work schedule with out decreasing productiveness would require organizations to undertake new instruments, processes and options.

In response to a latest pilot performed by 4 Day Workweek International, the condensed schedule resulted in much less burnout, greater job satisfaction and higher psychological and bodily well being. It is also confirmed to supply important recruiting benefits. Many of the pilot’s 30 taking part corporations have since made the change everlasting.

Nonetheless, many who fail to adequately put together their groups earlier than making the change face important challenges. However there are methods to chop down on work time with out chopping down on productiveness. In reality, a 2022 research discovered that information staff solely spend a 3rd of their time focussed on expert work and 9% devoted in direction of main strategic objectives.

Switching to a four-day workweek whereas sustaining — and even growing — productiveness, due to this fact, requires first addressing essentially the most important time wasters. Fortuitously, a spread of instruments and processes can allow workers to chop a full day’s price of waste out of their weekly schedules.

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1. Give attention to outcomes, not effort

A lot of our work tradition equates “busyness” with “effectiveness,” however encouraging a tradition that prizes “busyness” can cut back total productiveness. Moderately than give attention to how a lot time workers devoted to a process, organizations ought to as a substitute work with workers to set benchmarks associated to particular outcomes on a practical timeline and a mutually agreed upon measure of success.

That might embody contributing their piece of a bigger venture earlier than a sure deadline, drafting a price range in time for the subsequent board assembly, or touchdown a sure variety of gross sales per week. Regardless of the process, it is important to give attention to what’s completed, not what number of hours it took.

2. Get extra out of fewer (and shorter) conferences

Analysis has discovered that distant work has led to extra and longer conferences, a development that organizations might want to reverse to chop down on wasted time. Listed below are just a few methods to cut back assembly time whereas holding everybody within the loop.

1. All the time put together and share an agenda prematurely
2. Restrict conferences to half-hour or much less
3. Begin conferences at odd occasions — corresponding to 12:03 — and persist with these begin and finish occasions to bolster a tradition that values each minute
4. Set the tone, context and expectations earlier than the assembly begins, and share essential factors after it ends, utilizing asynchronous communication instruments like e mail, Slack and Bubbles.
5. When needed, proceed conversations over async options to keep away from extending conferences.

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3. Use tech instruments to measure and optimize work hours

Discovering extra hours within the day is barely potential when these hours are tracked and measured. That is why it is vital for organizations to undertake venture, time and process administration instruments earlier than adopting a four-day workweek. Mixed, these instruments can assist leaders benchmark time-saving actions and measure their progress in direction of shared objectives, corresponding to chopping down on assembly occasions and frequency by 20% throughout the board.

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4. Cut back distractions with async instruments

When workers is partaking of their best “deep work,” the very last thing you need is for them to be distracted by the dings and buzzes of limitless notifications. In reality, analysis has proven that even small interrupts can result in nervousness and frustration and that it could take greater than 20 minutes to get again on observe.

That’s the reason organizations trying to get extra productiveness out of much less work time have to be vigilant of their effort to cut back pointless distractions in any respect prices. Probably the most efficient methods to take action is by relying much less on real-time communications and as a substitute adopting extra asynchronous methods. Instruments designed to facilitate asynchronous communications, like Bubbles, enable staff members to collaborate successfully with out requiring them to be “always-on” and with out pulling them out of their deep work with limitless notifications.

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5. Encourage a tradition of productiveness and time administration

To optimize their workers member’s time, organizational leaders have to acknowledge that essentially the most disrupting distractions come from the highest. Whereas we’d simply brush off a notification from a colleague, most will pull themselves away from the duty at hand to reply to a message from management. Subsequently, the methods outlined above are solely as efficient because the management’s willingness to undertake them.

A few of the methods leaders can “stroll the stroll” embody:

1. Undertake asynchronous work types
2. Keep away from treating each process as pressing, and prioritize appropriately
3. Keep away from sending textual content, slack and e mail messages to colleagues that may distract them from deep work

The four-day workweek presents many benefits to employers and workers, however these advantages can solely be achieved when staff are empowered to chop down on wasted time. Fortuitously, there’s quite a lot of room for enchancment and quite a lot of new options designed to assist workers preserve and even improve productiveness whereas decreasing total work hours.