Is it time for the four-day workweek to be fully implemented?

Over the past few years, the same type of news has repeatedly appeared in the business world: a company has switched to a four-day workweek. In 2017, Basecamp introduced its "summer hours" policy in ablog post, implementing a four-day workweek from May 1 to August 31. Volt Athletics wrote about its policy onMediumin August 2020. Chelsea Fagan, CEO of the media company The Financial Diet, hasmentioned onTwittermultiple timesthat the company decided to adopt a four-day workweek in spring 2021, saying, "Looking back, the idea of a five-day workweek now seems a bit crazy."

For many people—especially Americans—the four-day workweek may seem as distant a concept as flying cars or time travel. However, the pandemic has upended expectations of what is "normal" and "possible."

Although transitioning to a four-day workweek requires careful preparation, executives at two companies—eFileCabinet in Utah and Bolt in San Francisco—told HR Dive that the benefits could be substantial.

Preliminary research is essential

Before transitioning to a four-day workweek, it is necessary to consider how the company will implement the policy. Leaders at Bolt and eFileCabinet told HR Dive that HR professionals can study successful pilots in other regions and conduct internal pilots to observe how the policy performs in practice.

Michael Plante, CMO of eFileCabinet, said: "We carefully studied many pilot projects in different global markets. There were pilots in New Zealand, Spain, Iceland, and Microsoft's team in Japan also conducted one. We combed through all the data and lessons learned from these studies."

Jesse Wood, CEO of eFileCabinet, was the first advocate of the policy within the company, having accumulated extensive research on the four-day workweek well before the pandemic, which accelerated the process. "COVID really accelerated everything because it seemed to highlight or exacerbate tensions that already existed, whether it was burnout, work-life balance, or caring for family," Plante said.

The company initially gave its approximately 125 employees one or two Fridays off per month, a arrangement that lasted "about a year," Plante said. This trial allowed eFileCabinet to confirm that the policy could succeed.

Fintech company Bolt just made the four-day workweek apermanent policy, and its Chief People Officer, Jennifer Christie, said the company began a pilot in September. Similar to eFileCabinet, Bolt's management primarily viewed the four-day workweek as a means to address burnout and help employees recharge.

Christie said: "We found that people weren't resting, weren't stepping away, and weren't being as intentional about the meetings they attended as they could have been." She noted that employees felt guilty even taking a single day off and worried about adding extra burden to colleagues. Bolt recognized this issue and wanted to shift to what it calls a "culture of consciousness"—a company culture that "balances execution with humanity."

"The idea was, 'Listen, if we really want to push this, let's do it company-wide,'" Christie said, "so everyone rests at the same time. There are no meetings that day. People know... you save your Slack messages for Monday, you save your emails for Monday."

Shifting the mindset

For anxious executives, the concern about the four-day workweek is that productivity will decline. After all, in most cases, the policy means fewer working hours, not compressing the same number of hours into four days. But this relies on a metric for measuring output that is rapidly becoming obsolete in today's workplace: the clock.

When asked to accomplish the same amount of work in less time, eFileCabinet employees discovered many unoptimized parts of their schedules. "It really comes down to focus and prioritization," Plante said. Each department found its own ways to cut unnecessary tasks and eliminate processes that didn't yield results.

Plante said that determining metrics to measure success was an important step. In his marketing department, "we shifted our output metrics from leads to sales pipeline. It sounds very straightforward. But what it means is, if something generated leads but didn't create pipeline—where the sales team couldn't get follow-up opportunities—then my marketing team would stop doing it. They just stopped." This freed up time and budget to focus on strategies that more consistently generated sales pipeline. Another department invested in software that significantly reduced time spent on communication.

In other words, when faced with the challenge of "doing the same with less," departments quickly learned which frustrating tasks were wasting time and how to strategize around outcomes that truly impact company success. "It reminds me of an onion," Plante said, "Before and after we launched the four-day workweek, we peeled off the obvious layers first. Then we discovered... the next layer of efficiency gains. It just keeps going."

A common source of wasted time Bolt found was unnecessary meetings. Although the phrase "meetings that could have been emails" hasspawnedeverything from mugs to ribbons to coasters, many managers and other employees still pull colleagues into long meetings with no agenda, no action items, and often seemingly no purpose. By introducing the discipline of time reduction, such inefficient uses of time may finally be eliminated, as employees share what is essential to achieving goals and what is not.

Attracting talent

Amid ongoing labor shortages and thewar for talent, the four-day workweek may be especially attractive to employers. Employees are experiencing unprecedented burnout, as both Plante and Christie noted. Additionally, in an employee-driven job market, candidates are seeking better benefits and moreflexible policies。

Since implementing the four-day workweek, "I would say the number of interested candidates has increased three to five times," Plante said, while also "feeling that the quality of candidates is very high." In fact, on the day the company announced the policy in August, "we received a large number of excellent candidates" applying for open positions, which "led to some very solid hires."

Similarly, Christie said that when news spread on social media that Bolt intended to keep the four-day workweek, the company received a flood of interest. "I had a meeting with team leaders yesterday, and all of them reported receiving numerous direct messages after posting on LinkedIn and Twitter, asking 'Are there open positions? I want to apply'—things like that," she said.

This interest is not surprising; as news spreads of more companies adopting the policy, employees have been calling for a four-day workweek. A study released by Eagle Hill Consulting in November found that83% of employeesbelieve a four-day workweek would reduce burnout.

Improving employee satisfaction

Both companies cited employee burnout as a core reason for implementing the four-day workweek, so has the policy addressed the issue? The answer appears to be yes.

After the three-month pilot, Bolt sent surveys to employees to decide whether to continue the policy and assess its effects. The feedback wasoverwhelmingly positive; 94% of employees and 91% of managers supported continuing the four-day workweek. In terms of productivity, the impact was mostly minimal, with 86% of employees saying they used their time more effectively and 85% of managers saying their teams had no issues meeting goals. Most critically, on the burnout front, 84% of employees said their work-life balance had improved.

At eFileCabinet, Plante estimated that voluntary turnover dropped by 40% to 50%, showing significant retention benefits.

"One employee on my team said, 'We are more productive than ever, and the extra day off before the weekend helps both our mood and mental health,'" Plante said. "Another employee, one of my executive colleagues, talked about how it really helped her achieve work-life balance, and that makes her a more focused and productive employee."

Taking Friday off—or choosing another day for employees who need to work different days or hours due to client needs—allows employees to "batch" essential life tasks like doctor appointments or grocery shopping on Fridays, thereby reserving work hours for work and precious weekend time for friends or family.

Bolt encourages employees to use the extra day to explore and recharge, aiming to make them happier and more productive employees. According to CEO Ryan Breslow, the four-day workweek has allowed creativity to "explode”。

" at Bolt. "Personally, I've noticed that I do my best work by 'going all in' over four days, then using the long weekend to recharge and explore other passions like dance, meditation, and hiking," he toldFast Company. "I have more time to think clearly, be creative, and strategize."

This view is supported by research, further complicating the notion that productivity can be measured by hours worked; the human brain does not operate steadily like a machine, but ratherneeds downtimeto process information, make connections, and often produce the best ideas.

Plante echoed Breslow's sentiments. "The Friday time creates white space that allows me to truly process strategic issues, projects, and plans in my head," he said. "It's mental white space. I'm not sitting in a meeting room, or on a Zoom call, or firing off 25 urgent emails. So even when I'm not working—I might be out hiking or Christmas shopping—my brain is better able to process problems, challenges, and strategic topics. That white space makes me a better leader personally."