Can spending less time on the clock actually make your team more productive?

Joe O’Connor thinks. He is the CEO of 4DayWeek.com, a company that aims to change our collective mindsets around the traditional 9 to 5, Monday to Friday.

It sounds counter-intuitive, of course – and yet many organizations are willing to give it a try.

In fact, Search Engine Journal is currently experimenting with a four-day work week.

Joe currently leads the 4 Day Week Global pilot program, and in the first six months of 2022, 150 companies and 7,000 of their employees participated in coordinated six-month trials of the 4 Day Week.

Joe recently joined SEJ Show host Loren Baker on a podcast episode to help your marketing team succeed in the structure of a 4-day work week.

We had the opportunity to connect with Joe after his podcast interview and ask him a few more questions about how he’s grown in this career as a flexible working advocate and organizational change agent.

Here, he talks about leadership, productivity, and the trends and skills we’ll need to sustain our careers and businesses.

Growing in the four-day week mindset

Miranda Miller: What path led you to become Global Pilot Program Manager and now CEO of 4 Day Week Global?

Joe O’Connor: “In my previous role as Campaigns Director for Ireland’s largest public service union, Fórsa, I organized an international conference on the future of working time in 2018 and founded and launched the coalition campaign campaign Four Day Week Ireland in 2019.

I’ve been collaborating with the pioneer founders of 4 Day Week Global, Andrew Barnes and Charlotte Lockhart since 2019 as well.

When I developed a pilot program and four-day research project in Ireland last year, it aligned with their plans to develop a global pilot project and a major campaign in the United States, I therefore joined the organization full-time in September 2021.

At the same time, I moved from Ireland to New York with my partner and our two cocker spaniels, where I am also leading a research project on working time reduction as a visiting researcher at the ILR School of Ireland. ‘Cornell University.

Miranda Miller: Tell us a bit about what you do. How has this work model changed the way you do your own work?

Joe O’Connor: “I learned a lot from the kind of direct exposure I had to a wide range of very different companies that adopted new innovative working practices, identified process improvements and adopted new technologies to make their businesses efficient enough to deliver five days of production in four.

This not only strengthened my ability to help leaders understand how to make this work for their business, but also allowed me to implement these strategies to make our organization as lean and efficient as possible.

This is a continuous work in progress – the four-day week and working smart is continuous fitness, not a one-time decision.

Miranda Miller: At your management level, how is your time allocated between organizational strategy, people management and other activities?

Joe O’Connor: “Although we are growing rapidly, we are still a relatively small organization with a fairly flat organizational structure, so I am still very much involved in running our day-to-day operations and rolling out global pilot programs.

The incredible organic momentum behind the global four-day week movement, particularly over the past six months or so, has meant we’ve had to be extremely nimble to respond to this rapidly changing space.

In recent months, I have been able to dedicate more time to proactively charting our future. We are building our capabilities to achieve our goal of running our 4-day week pilot program quarterly in every time zone and region by the second quarter of 2023.”

Productivity, leadership and the 100-80-100™ model

Miranda Miller: Can you share the two main influences that shape your understanding of productivity and leadership?

Joe O’Connor: “One of the things that inspired me was my experience with public sector workers in Ireland, where many working parents – mostly women – told us en masse in a large survey that they had chosen to work four-day schedules or reduced hours after returning from parental leave, for reasons of work-life balance and child care.

However, despite having dropped to 80% of their salary, they still felt that their responsibilities were the same, their role expectations were the same, and their performance was the same.

This tells us two things: First, we have an important gender equality issue in the workplace that a universal four-day week could solve in a revolutionary way.

And second, when it comes to productivity, Parkinson’s Law applies – work tasks will expand to fill the time available for their completion.

Our founder Andrew Barnes also inspired me in this regard. The landmark four-day week-long trial he led at his company in 2018, Perpetual Guardian in New Zealand, was driven primarily by productivity.

By shifting the focus from the number of hours spent in the office, at the desk, or on the clock to the work produced and the results achieved, it could deliver better business performance while changing the lives of its employees for the better. .

The 100-80-100™ model he pioneered in this trial – 100% pay, 80% time, in exchange for a 100% performance commitment – is changing the world of work, being adopted by hundreds of companies around the world with our guidance. .”

Setting up your 4 day weekly plan for success

Miranda Miller: What productivity tips can you share with companies looking to embed a four-day work week campaign into their culture?

Joe O’Connor: “For many companies, the four-day week is already here. It is simply buried under the rubble of unnecessary practices and outdated processes, such as a lack of discipline in meetings, unnecessary distractions and presentations during the workday, and misuse of technology.

The four-day week can provide a transformative forcing function in your business to address these inefficiencies and powerfully align business productivity motivation with employee motivation for the transformative benefits an extra day off can bring.

While leaders need to be very clear in defining and communicating the direction of the journey, including the purpose, objectives, and metrics of the trial, they then need to empower their employees to understand the details.

The world’s most detail-oriented CEO doesn’t know the intricacies of every employee’s day-to-day work well enough to rethink them.

The largest and most lasting productivity gains have been made by companies that have taken a bottom-up approach to implementation, allowing staff to craft the work practice changes needed to redesign their work.

Often, some leaders overestimate potential problems and bottlenecks in the C-suite instead of asking their employees for ideas and solutions. »

Tips to future-proof your career and your business

What future for the world of work? What key trends/practices do companies need to start adopting, and how can leaders prepare for the future?

Joe O’Connor: “When we started working with companies to test or transition to part-time work in 2019, the main reasons were to address productivity issues and burnout issues.

While these two elements remain important, they have been overtaken by recruitment and retention as the primary reason leaders are drawn to the four-day week.

In a highly competitive job market, innovative and forward-thinking leaders recognize that if they can pull off the four-day week without sacrificing organizational priorities, they can give themselves a very significant competitive advantage in the war for talent.

While many companies may not be able to compete in the top 1% in compensation, they can compete by offering in the top 1% in work weeks.

And the greatest benefits will flow the longest to early adopters.

Companies like Atom Bank in the UK have seen a 500% increase in applications for vacancies since switching to a four-day week.

On the health front, a large non-profit organization here in the United States introduced the four-day week last August to combat retention issues and has since seen its unplanned staff turnover reduced to zero.

Leaders must now ask themselves: Is my biggest risk trying the four-day week and failing, or is my biggest competitor embracing this new way of working first and reaping the rewards?”

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Feature image: Courtesy of Joe O’Connor/4 Day Week Global