Is it possible to increase productivity more than 30 % by working 4 days per week?

Exactly 2 years ago we did a little experiment and for a period of 3 months we tried a 4-day work week, taking off the first Friday of each month. After the trial period, we analyzed the results, taking into account both the positive and negative factors, made some changes and decided to try it out for another 3 months, yet this time increasing the amount of Fridays off from 1 to 2 per month.

We continued along this path, and eventually, after 1 year of trials, we decided that every Friday would be a day off, and we have kept this policy up to today! (4 days a week, from 9 am to 6 pm) But implementing this went beyond just a change from the traditional way of working, what was especially interesting was the company results and the difference it made in the individual lives of the employees, which we would like to share with you in the following.

At first glance, it may seem that if your employees work less time during the week the results will be definitely end in a decrease (less clients, less projects, less revenue, etc.). However, this is not necessarily the truth, as in our company the revenue increased by 37%. Honestly, we did not expect this, we thought it would be excellent if we could just maintain the same level of billing.

I invite you to answer this question: Is it really possible for you, as well as your employees, to reach a balance between life and work if you have 5 days of work and only 2 for your family, hobbies, house chores, etc.?

This question sparked our curiosity and we invite you to seek out a solution.

There is an important initial concept that you must realize: not always does more work mean more productivity. Just by having your employees seated at their desks for more hours does not mean an increase in earnings will be generated. In today’s reality, you cannot make a quantitative analysis such as “being at the computer one more hour is equal to an additional 250 Dollars for the company.”

This concept was true for the industrial age, whereas more hours were put in by the workers such as those on an assembly line, the profits would increase. Today, a good programmer that is dedicated and concentrated on their work can easily do in 4 days what another one might take 5 days to do.

As shared by Brian Scudamore CEO of 1-800-GOT-JUNK? in this article: “Working 20% more only gives a 20% productivity boost. But devoting 20% more time to thinking and recharging can result in a 1,000% productivity boost.”

If you have creative people on your team such as programmers, designers, writers, engineers, and many other professions, what is important is that you understand that they do not need more hours in order to achieve the highest results possible, no, the key is in reducing as much as possible the amount of interruptions they may have.

As shown in this article, interruptions at work can cost you up to 6 hours of wasted time per day.

If you pay careful attention, for example, to the way in which the programmers for your company work, you will observe that they dedicate 3 to 4 hours on average for working in a highly concentrated fashion and without interruptions so that they can fix any problems with the code or implement a new function. For this reason, after such a great investment in energy at work, it is essential to have a long weekend, with 3 days.

Without a doubt, when they come back in on Monday, they will be functioning at 100%. Remember, your goal is not for them to work more time, but for them to have less interruptions.

Furthermore, in our company, we learned that working 4 days a week resulted in the fact that everyone in the company took less time off for doctor visits and other necessary personal tasks, because they know that they have a long weekend to take advantage of going to an office visit with their kids, engaging with social media, reading the news, searching the internet in order to buy or sell their car, and thousands of other activities.

In a survey carried out by AtTask and sponsored by the Harris Poll, the results showed that the employees of large corporations invested only 45% of their time to the job that was their direct responsibility. While the other 55% was wasted in interruptions such as emails, meetings, administrative tasks, etc.

To close out this point, according to this report by IBM, 46% of the purchases made on Cyber Monday are done during work hours between 9 am and 6 pm.

The fact that your employees can have more time for themselves and for their families will teach them to value more the hours that they spend in the office because when you have less time to reach a goal, you will always get rid of the things that don’t really matter.

Another very interesting advantage point that you will have if your company works 4 days per week is that you will have a difference maker in your favor when it comes to finding new talent, and even more importantly when trying to find the most qualified ones. This is a reality because those potential employees that are excellent at what they do are going to decide for themselves where they want to work as they have many options to choose from.

This will allow you to surround yourself with the most talented, those that can do more work in less time, where you will both experience a win-win situation with the 4-day work week policy.

An added bonus is the fact that you will be able to retain the people that work for your company for a longer amount of time. When you have less rotation in your staff, you will be able to save all the time that you waste on training new human resources. This amount of time will definitely justify working 4 days a week instead of 5.

According to a study by the Society for Human Resource Management, 43% of companies offer at least some of the employees a 4-day work week, and 10% offer it to the majority or all of their staff. The reason for this? “Because it positively impacts the final results.”

Now is the right moment for you to make this change in your company, both for your and your employee’s sake.

How should you implement it in your company?

The best way to make this a reality is that you take it step by step, with small changes over a fixed period of time so that you can measure the results and make adjustments as needed.

Once you see that working 4 days will not produce negative effects on your productivity and that you can even improve them, you will feel confident to keep on advancing with the trials until it is something that is done for good.

The conclusion is simple, if you have a profitable company which increases year by year, what is stopping you from working 4 days per week? Both you and your employees will have 50% more time for their family (with weekends going from 2 to 3 days) while also maintaining or even improving the overall efficiency.

And if you look at this from another angle, what will happen if your competition implements this before you do, and thereby be able to attract and maintain the best talent?

Start today and talk to your team, plan trials and analyze results, you will be surprised because there is definitely a better way to work and live.

These experiences were shared by Universidad Católica de Córdoba Engineer Christian Rennella, founder or Créditos Online in Mexico. Risk investor in the entrepreneurial environment in South America.