How To Ask Your Employer for a Four-Day Work Week
Data suggests that a four-day work week increases productivity and benefits the overall working process. So, if you dream about three-day long weekends, you can make them a reality if you know how to convince your boss.
If you want to ask your employer for a four-day work week, you must first explain how the move will benefit the company. Next, create a plan outlining how work would be arranged and propose a trial term, during which all employees must demonstrate enhanced productivity.
The benefits of a four-day work week are becoming more widely acknowledged around the world, with countries like Japan, Iceland, the UAE, and others already implementing the practice. Although some US-based companies are prepared to give the system a shot, many employers are still hesitant to take the risk. Read on to learn how to create a proposal your boss won't be able to refuse.
1. Measure Your Productivity
A good starting point would be to gather material for your proposal, and the easiest way is to start with yourself. What benefits will you bring to the company if your boss agrees to a four-day work week? That’s something you should find out before making any further moves.
Try a four-day working schedule for a few weeks. You can arrange this by taking some days off. Reflect on your experience and see how the new working regime affected your results and motivation to work.
Find a way to track your progress, so you have some substantial evidence to present in your future proposal. For instance, if you have a typical set of more or less similar tasks you do every week, measure how much of that you were able to do working four days instead of five. Or, if you are working on a project, see how soon you are able to complete it compared to five-day long working weeks.
The questions you need to ask yourself by the end of this small experiment are:
‘Can I do in four days as much as I do in five? Can I do more than that?’
‘Do I feel more productive having a three-day long weekend?’
‘Do I feel motivated to work?’
The answers to these questions should be later presented to your boss with some examples of completed work to follow. This will make your proposal much stronger.
However, there are also other, more personal questions you should answer:
‘Do I feel stressed about the deadlines working only four days a week?’
‘Do I feel more pressure now that I work less than I normally do?’
‘Am I comfortable and productive enough to complete my work without burning out on such a schedule?’
These questions are for you, but they are no less important. After all, this project is about your health and comfort in the first place.
Available data does show that a four-day working schedule lets employees rest enough, prevents burning out, and improves the balance between work and personal life, giving you more time to, well, live.
However, depending on the job you do and the industry you work in, it might be difficult and too stressful chasing deadlines. Some people may feel pressured to work more since they have less time to complete their projects, and it can cause anxiety.
Reflect on how the experiment went, and if you got good results with no disturbing feelings, proceed to discuss the idea with your team.
2. Discuss the Idea of a Four-Day Work Week With Your Team
You have a better chance of succeeding with your proposal if other people on the team support it. Actually, since the decision is about them, too, it is essential to discuss the idea with them first.
Start by talking to those colleagues who you are in a friendly relationship with. Even if they initially dislike your idea, you will have a better prospect of changing their mind. You can suggest they try it for themselves as you (hopefully) did to better understand how it works.
For the purposes of your proposal, you need to figure out how a five-day work week can be reorganized to properly function one day short. To do this, you need to cooperate with your colleagues, discussing your planned meetings, team projects, communication arrangements, and changes to your schedule.
By the end of this step of the process, you should have at least 2-3 people on board with your idea and come up with a decent plan of how a four-day work week will function in your working reality. With all the data collected, you can start working on your proposal.
3. Write a Proposal
Here’s the most crucial part: you should create a convincing proposal showing how your company would benefit from a change in schedule, how you expect it to function, and what the boss achieves by agreeing to your suggestion.
How do you nail it? Focusing on the important stuff, building a solid argument, being ready to address potential issues and skepticism of your employer, and staying flexible. Let’s break down each part, so you know exactly what to do.
Focus on the Benefits for the Company
The center of your proposal should be an impressive presentation of how a four-day work week will improve productivity and efficiency for your company. When talking to your employer, you should focus on them as much as possible, describing what problems can be solved by implementing this approach.
What benefits can your employer expect? Here are some general ideas to get you started:
Happier and more productive employees. You can point out the statistics: in Japan, a four-day work week experiment resulted in productivity increasing by 40%.
Flexibility for employees means more loyalty to the company. An employee whose boss is ready to trust them and commit to such an experiment is less likely to see someone leave their position.
Attractive employment. Potential candidates for future positions will likely find a four-day work week a huge plus, making it easier to attract highly qualified specialists. Even if they are not interested in three days off each week, they will be impressed by the company’s respect and trust for their workers.
Reduced expenditures. If you work from an office, making your working week a day shorter will save the company some electricity bills, corporate coffee, and so on. Include whatever is relevant to your office life.
Reduced carbon footprint. If your boss is at all concerned about such issues, definitely make a point about how the reduced consumption of electricity and natural gas (whichever you use, or both) will help lower your collective impact on the environment.
To sound convincing, you should make it as personalized as possible. Look for real cases connected to these general benefits in the current situation in your company and bring them up in your proposal, explaining how a four-day work week could fix that.
Support Your Argument With Evidence
To make your point stronger, back it up with statistics. Start by describing the experiment you had in preparation for your proposal and what results it brought. Proceed to include the successful cases of other companies, such as:
Perpetual Guardian: probably the most famous case of a New Zealand-based company whose founder, Andrew Barnes, was so impressed with the results of a four-day work week that he began actively promoting the approach to other companies worldwide. According to his reports, he managed to reduce business costs while keeping employees’ salaries the same, with their engagement increasing by 40%.
Microsoft Japan: an already mentioned case, but do not forget to include it. It reports an astonishing 40% increase in productivity!
Henley’s Report on UK-based companies: 64% of employers report increased productivity of employees, with 40% of employees using the extra days off to improve their qualifications, thus bringing more value to the company. 63% of employers also mentioned attracting top specialists thanks to the four-day schedule.
These are some of the most widely cited cases. You can look up examples that are more similar to your case in company size, type, or region, whichever might be more convincing to your boss.
Be Ready for Criticism
You may find your employer reluctant to accept your argument at first. Be ready to answer their questions and ask yours.
The key point here is to develop a clear idea of how you propose to organize the working process. This has to be done in close cooperation with your colleagues, as every part of the team has its own concerns, tasks, and agreements that all have to be rearranged.
You are more likely to succeed if you propose a well-thought working model that your employer won’t have to struggle with themselves. Do your best to think about potential issues and address them in your proposal and prepare to answer follow-up questions.
Encourage other team members to analyze their productivity during the day and determine what decreases it. Employees often spend much time during their working day on extra duties or unnecessarily long meetings. By leaving out the time-dragger tasks and concentrating on the actual work, you can optimize the work week and fit it into four days without losing anything of importance.
Make sure to explain in detail what you propose to change and what should be kept. Back up each proposition with expertise from you or your colleagues.
If your boss is still not inclined to consider a four-day work week, ask them what is missing from your proposal that could change their mind. Continue the conversation and work towards a satisfying outcome for both parties.
Stay Flexible
Be ready to negotiate. Your boss may be ready to accept what you propose only partly, and if so, communicate your needs to them, but be ready to make compromises.
Your employer may consider a four-day work week for a four-day work payment, so think about whether that is acceptable to you from the very start. You have better chances if you are ready to negotiate payment.
However, if that is not acceptable to you, it doesn’t mean you should settle! Build a strong argument and insist on a trial, during which you can show impressive results and convince the boss to accept your terms.
4. Agree on a Trial Period
If you manage to get a trial, you have succeeded. The trial period will determine whether a four-day work week works for your team, so here’s your chance.
Make sure to make an agreement on precise conditions. Negotiate a time period that won’t be too long for your boss but also enough for you to show some substantial results.
The most important part is the expected outcome. Specify what results should be achieved by the end of the working period for it to be a success. Keep it adequate, and don’t go above and beyond, as this will set expectations for future work, so stay realistic.
Agree on something that can be unequivocally measured and compared to your typical weekly or monthly results. It could be projects completed, clients attracted, items sold, or something of the sort, depending on what you do.
It would be a great practice to arrange regular team meetings where you can discuss how the experiment is going, what improvements are happening, what issues are emerging (if any), and so on.
Do your best to deliver the desired results, and keep reflecting on the changes you’re experiencing. By the end of the trial, if everything goes well, you should be able to get your four-day work week and live a more balanced, happy, and productive life.
Conclusion
Before requesting a four-day work week, you should try it for yourself by taking a few days off and reflecting on your experience. Get some colleagues on board with your idea and ask them to contribute to your proposal.
A strong and convincing proposal should include:
the description of what problems your suggestion can solve for the company
evidence supporting your promises based on successful cases
a clear plan of how to reorganize the working process.
Sources
CNBC: Would you like a four-day workweek? Here’s how to convince your company to test it out
Metro: Five questions you need to ask your boss about a four-day working week
Owl Labs: Why You Should Try a 4-Day Workweek (+ How to Pitch It)
4 Day Week Global: Overview of the Perpetual Guardian 4-day (paid 5) Work Trial
HR Executive: How can the 4-day work week be a true game-changer for employers?