X + Y = 40, unless it’s 32. There are at least as many different four-day work plans as there are days in the week, but two main models seem to be most popular:
• The compressed week, in which employees work four 10-hour shifts
• The reduced week, in which employees work just 32 hours but are expected to maintain the same level of productivity as if they were working a full 40.
Both models have their proponents and plenty of anecdotal success stories, but there are cautions to be aware of for both employers and workforce.
“The four-10 compressed workweek has been around as a concept for years. I’ve taught it,” says Lisa Burke-Smalley, professor of management at UT-Chattanooga’s Gary W. Rollins College of Business. “And the research on that – there’s some negative stuff that comes out, as you can imagine, on stress, burnout and disengagement. It’s not an attractive feature for everybody.”
Jennifer Rittenhouse, assistant professor of practice at UT-Knoxville’s Haslam College of Business, agrees.
“Especially when things are tight and business might be facing a recessionary type of environment, are they expecting more out of fewer employees? Are you getting enough productivity out of the employees? And if you’re expecting 10 hours a day, are you really getting the productivity for those extra two hours?”
Burke-Smalley prefers the reduced-week model, and has research to back it up.
“This newer concept of a four-day workweek, which has been kind of experimentally tried globally and in the United States in the last year or two, that’s actually four eight-hour days,” she says. “So actually going from 40 (hours per week) to 32, the research I’m seeing is more positive than the four 10s. The stuff that’s being reported is more engaged employees, fewer health issues, fewer stress issues, easier to recruit, easier to retain talent and can increase productivity and reduce labor costs.”
Where the 32-hour-week model can get trickier to implement, Rittenhouse says, is with salaried employees who are not compensated by the hour and are, for the most part, exempt from overtime compensation.
In 2020 and 2021, with many COVID-related workplace restrictions in place, companies had to be flexible and creative to fill open positions, and nontraditional work models figured heavily in that calculus. “It was definitely very employee-focused for a while,” Rittenhouse says.
Now, she says, some companies are starting to push back against paying salaried employees the same amount of money for fewer baseline hours.
“If we were back where we were two years ago, I think you might have seen more of, ‘OK, you only have to work 32 hours, but we’ll pay you a 40-hour-a-week salary.’
“If I’m a CEO of a business now, and I’m trying to figure out how to maximize my productivity and keep us productive as interest rates are rising and my costs are through the roof? I’m not sure a CEO would choose to do that.”
To that end, prospective employees of companies offering four-day work weeks need to do their homework in advance, to make sure they understand exactly what they’re signing up for.
“I tell the students, you just need to be choosy on the organization that you work with,” Rittenhouse says. “When you’re doing your job search, pick the employer that meets the type of environment that you’re after.
“Does that mean that you’re working four days and they want you available by phone on the fifth? If that’s what the expectations are, but employees think the expectations are, ‘Oh, I get off on that day,’ you’ve got to figure that part out.”