'The most important thing is not to dismiss it and to engage with the issue,' says expert
One of the key opportunities for employers who implement a four-day work week is to be a leader in the debate around sustainable flexibility, according to Dion Love, vice president, research and advisory at Gartner.
“There is an argument that flexibility as we did it during the pandemic is not sustainable for all employees in all organisations,” he told HRD Australia. “But that doesn't mean that we can't engage in the debate.”
Love wants companies “to have a clear, offensive position on the four-day work week as the dominant conversation around flexibility today”.
“It's not the only type of flexibility,” he said. “There is fully remote work, there's hybrid work, there's flexible work in other ways. But this is something that a company who seeks competitive advantage in the global labour market can grab onto and say, ‘we have a view on that’.”
But there are still some challenges that employers can face when approaching a four-day work week.
The challenges of a 4-day work week
Love was one of the speakers at the Gartner ReimagineHR Conference in Sydney this week. One of the biggest challenges he said when it comes implementing a four-day work week is the perception about whether it can work or not.
“There's an assumption that leaders just aren't interested in different types of flexibility – it's time to get back to the office,” he said. “We also saw in some benchmark polling that we did back in April of this year, that there was a not insignificant number of organisations or HR leaders that were concerned about continuity of services.”
For example, if everybody was to leave on a Thursday afternoon and your business is not open on Friday, what would it mean for customers on Friday, Love said.
Another key challenge is the idea employers may have that four-day work weeks are “media hype” and “it's a good thing to talk about but it's not something that we can really seriously consider,” Love said.
“It’s plain wrong,” he said. “Twenty-one per cent of organisations are either considering implementing or implementing some form of four-day work week.”
Companies including Medibank, Unilever, Our Community, The Walk and More Than Mortgages have embarked on a four-day work week trial. And 40% of respondents in a recent Hays survey believed a four-day work week will be a reality in the next five years.
How to approach 4-day work weeks
The first step Love suggested for employers looking to implement a four-day work week is to look at the perceived barriers.
“Get all of those barriers out and then say, ‘alright, what are the ones that are plain wrong? And what are the ones that are viable barriers that we need to address in whatever model of four-day workweek, we propose?’” he said.
The next step is to define the implementation plan for the four-day work week.
“If you're concerned about everybody knocking off on Thursday afternoon, and your customers not being served on Friday, don't do a universal day off, do a distributed day off,” he said. “Or focus, instead of the days, on the hours; this is a 32-hour work week instead of a 40-hour work week.
“I think we do ourselves a little bit of a disservice by calling it a four-day work week because that makes the human brain think immediately, ‘we're working until Thursday, then they go home’, he said.
Ultimately, Love said employers should not ignore the debate around four-day work weeks.
“The most important thing is not to dismiss it and to engage with the issue,” he said. “In an environment where flexibility is a top three priority for candidates active and passive today, we need to have, as a company, a story on flexibility. And the thing with this is, I could start building from the ground up a story on flexibility.
“Or I could take the dominant issue that's already in the headlines, and say, ‘Here's my view on it’. So the most important thing is don't dismiss it, have a point of view on it, and be seen as a leader in it. Because otherwise, as far as the narrative of the labour market is concerned, if you don't do that, you're going to be left with at the very best a defensive position on [the] return to office.”
