Is the 4-day week the destiny of work? Q&A with Joe O’Connor

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Can your team turn out to be extra productive by spending much less time on the clock?

Joe O’Connor he thinks so. He is the CEO of 4DayWeek.Com, a agency that objectives to shift our collective mindset across the traditional nine to 5, Monday thru Friday.

It really sounds counter-intuitive – yet many corporations are willing to provide it a attempt.

In truth, search Engine magazine is currently experimenting with a 4-day paintings week.

Joe is presently piloting the 4 Day Week worldwide and inside the first six months of 2022, a hundred and fifty companies and 7,000 in their employees participated in a six-month coordinated trial of the 4 Day Week.

Joe currently joined SEJ show host Loren Baker va podcast episode about helping your advertising crew succeed in the structure of a 4-day work week.

We had a chance to capture up with Joe after his podcast interview and ask him a few greater questions on how he grew into this profession as a flexible work advocate and organizational exchange agent.

right here he talks approximately leadership, productivity and the tendencies and abilities we can want for the destiny to maintain our careers and businesses.

developing into a four-day week mind-set

Miranda Miller: What path led you to turning into the global Pilot software supervisor and now CEO of four Day Week global?

Joe O’Connor: “In my preceding function as Director of Campaigns for ireland’s largest public quarter union, Fórsa, I organized an international convention on the future of working time in 2018 and based and released the 4 Day Week ireland marketing campaign coalition in 2019.

on the grounds that 2019, i have additionally been operating with the pioneering founders of 4 Day Week global, Andrew Barnes and Charlotte Lockhart.

when I evolved a 4-day-a-week pilot application and studies challenge in ireland ultimate 12 months, it aligned with their plans to broaden a global pilot assignment and a huge-scale marketing campaign within the US, so I joined the agency complete-time in September 2021.

at the equal time, I moved from ireland to ny with my associate and our cocker spaniels, wherein I additionally lead a research challenge on shortening running hours as a travelling fellow on the ILR school at Cornell college.”

Miranda Miller: tell us a touch bit about what you do. How has this work model modified the way you do your personal paintings?

Joe O’Connor: “I found out plenty from direct publicity to a huge range of very numerous businesses that followed revolutionary new work practices, identified method improvements and adopted new technology to make their organizations efficient sufficient to supply 5 days of manufacturing in 4.

This no longer most effective bolstered my ability to aid leaders in identifying how to try this for their business, however additionally allowed me to put into effect those techniques to make our business enterprise as lean and efficient as viable.

it’s a regular paintings in progress – the 4-day week and running smart is an ongoing circumstance, now not a one-off selection.”

Miranda Miller: At your management degree, how is a while divided among organizational approach, humans control and different activities?

Joe O’Connor: “at the same time as we are growing rapidly, we are still a fairly small organization with a fairly flat organizational shape, so i’m nevertheless very involved in walking our every day operations and rolling out international pilots.

The remarkable organic momentum in the back of the global four-day week motion, specifically during the last six months, has meant that we’ve had to be extremely nimble in responding to this unexpectedly changing area.

In recent months, i have been capable of dedicate extra of my time to proactively making plans our destiny direction. We’re constructing capacity in the direction of our intention of jogging our four-day-a-week pilot each region in whenever quarter and area via Q2 2023.”

productivity, management and the 100-80-100™ version

Miranda Miller: are you able to percentage the primary two affects that shape your thinking about productivity and management?

Joe O’Connor: “one of the matters that stimulated me was my revel in with public sector employees in ireland, where many working dad and mom – specifically women – informed us in a chief survey that they had determined to paintings 4 days or much less when they lower back. From parental depart to stability professional and personal lifestyles and to take care of kids.

despite the fact that they dropped to eighty% of their earnings, they nonetheless felt that their responsibilities were the identical, their position expectancies were the same, and their backside line become the equal.

This tells us two things: firstly, we have a large problem of gender equality inside the administrative center, which a established four-day week should revolutionize.

And secondly, with regards to productivity, Parkinson’s law applies – work responsibilities will increase to fill the time available to complete them.

i was additionally stimulated with the aid of our founder Andrew Barnes. The floor-breaking 4-day-week experiment he led in 2018 at his corporation Perpetual father or mother in New Zealand was basically stimulated by means of productivity.

by means of transferring the focal point from the number of hours spent within the office, at the desk or on the clock to the paintings carried out and the results performed, I may want to ensure better business performance at the same time as converting the lives of my personnel for the better. .

The one hundred-eighty-one hundred™ model he pioneered on this test – ​​one hundred% pay, 80% work time in alternate for a dedication to 100% output – is now changing the sector of work, having been followed by means of loads of businesses global below our leadership the world. .”

installation your 4 day weekly software for success

Miranda Miller: What productiveness pointers are you able to percentage with companies seeking to contain the four-day week campaign into their culture?

Joe O’Connor: “for many groups, the 4-day week is already right here. It is sincerely buried underneath the rubble of wasteful practices and old procedures, along with a loss of field in conferences, unnecessary distractions and introductions to the workday, and bad use of era.

A four-day week can offer a transformative coercive characteristic to your corporation to cast off those inefficiencies and strongly align the agency’s effective motivation with employee motivation for the transformative advantages that a further day without work can bring.

while management have to be very clear in defining and speaking the route of journey, including the cause, goals and metrics for the trial, it ought to then empower its humans to determine out the information.

The most element-oriented CEO in the global does not know the day-to-day intricacies of every of his personnel’ jobs properly enough to convert them.

the biggest and most sustainable gains in productiveness have been done by groups which have followed a backside-up approach to implementation, allowing personnel to make the modifications to work practices had to remodel their work.

some leaders frequently suppose an excessive amount of about ability issues and blockages in leadership, as opposed to asking their people for thoughts and answers.”

tips to future-evidence your career and enterprise

what is next inside the global of work? What are the important thing developments/practices that organizations want to start adopting and how can leaders manipulate in the destiny?

Joe O’Connor: “while we started out working with groups in 2019 to trial or transition to part-time working, the primary reasons had been to deal with productiveness problems and worries about burnout.

while both continue to be essential, recruitment and retention have overtaken them as the most important cause leaders are interested in the 4-day week.

In a fairly competitive process market, innovative and ahead-questioning leaders recognize that if they could control a four-day week with out sacrificing organizational priorities, they could provide themselves with a vast competitive advantage within the warfare for talent.

even as many companies may not be able to healthy the top 1% in pay, they could compete in offering the pinnacle 1% of workweeks.

And the largest advantages will take the longest to attain early adopters.

businesses together with Atom bank within the uk have visible a 500% increase in process packages considering switching to the 4-day week.

on the fitness the front, a big non-earnings company here in the US implemented a 4-day week remaining August to combat employee retention troubles and has considering visible its unplanned employee turnover drop to 0.

Leaders need to now ask themselves: Is my largest danger the chance of attempting a 4-day week and failing, or is my largest competitor the primary to adopt this new manner of running and gain the rewards?

greater assets:


Featured image: Courtesy Joe O’Connor/4 Day Week international

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