Denis Moriarty | Four-day working weeks have more benefits than we expected

In my day job I run Our Community, a medium-sized company with 80 staff that services the not-for-profit and government sectors.

Mid-last year we were the first Australian company to join a global trial of the four-day week.

It worked out so well, we finished it early and now we're all working less. You - employer, employee, whatever - should think about it yourself.

Just to hit the FAQs, no, we haven't just worked the same number of hours over fewer days.

No, there has been no cut in salaries. No, there has been no drop in productivity. Instead, staff have been given training and guidance to offset the changes with innovations, efficiencies, and a clearer focus on the Our Community mission.

What's more there have been improvements on some measures - for example, sick leave is down 36 per cent. If there is a downside, we haven't found it yet.

Sure, there are going to be a lot of Australian businesses that have problems making the change. But there are a lot more that could do it on their ear.

The office today isn't at all like the Model T Ford production line, which underlies the five-day week and eight-hour day, and the clocking-on system that we've got now.

The software workers at our office, for example, don't have to work at the pace of the line, turning out a set amount of code every day.

They enjoy a high degree of autonomy because they're the people who best know how their piece of the puzzle fits in.

As their boss, I can tell whether they're doing good work, but I rely on their help to do it better.

Last year I asked them - and the rest of our crew - how our business could work better, and I believe that's why the changeover worked so well. Given a chance to suggest how we could make the four-day week work, staff passed me 193 pages of productivity improvements.

Since then, we've put a premium on people's time. We're more organised, we've cut back on meetings, and we focus on what's essential and reducing wasted effort.

We've made up the drop in hours with a greater understanding of what we're aiming for.

We're tapping into the creativity of some very creative people, and we can do that only because we're showing that we respect them as people, not just as hired hands.

Because - and I should perhaps have mentioned this earlier - the fundamental point of the exercise isn't to add a percent or two to the annual accounts, it's to make people happier.

Our grants search guru Stef is using the spare time to hone her yoga moves. Data analyst Orgil is spending his day off with his three-year-old daughter and picking up his other kids from school.

We've all been able to find time to relax, take a breath, reflect, and catch up on what's going on in our lives.

I could defend the move to four days by saying that I expect better mental health to further reduce sick leave, and for better work conditions to attract more good people to sign on, improving the bottom line, but that's just stuff at the margins.

The real reason for us moving to a shorter week and reinforcing our hybrid work arrangements, is that after what we saw during our lockdowns, there's no reason for regarding the standard setup as sacred.

We've been fetishising the 38-hour week as if it was a tribute to an angry god, enforced by thunderbolts or plagues of locusts, and it's just not.

The four-day week is only a down payment on a total life-changing rethink of the way we should do business.

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Today's workers are impatient with hierarchy and bullshit. We're in unsettled and unpredictable times, and management must be flexible.

I mean, I shouldn't have to take on the onus of demonstrating that the four-day week can work.

Other employers should be made to prove that they really need to keep workers at their desks and away from their families and friends and gardens for that precious extra day.

More happiness - and it's a tribute to the power of our mid-Victorian work norms that I have to say this - is, other things being equal, better than less happiness.

The people who assume that this can't work are probably the same people who don't believe in climate change, or addressing disadvantage, when all the evidence points to the need for action.

Real change can't be just a one-off effort. It has to be systemic and it has to start somewhere. I'd suggest that you look around your workplace now.