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Who doesn’t want to work less and live more? It's not surprising that a shorter working week has benefits for staff. According to 4 Day Week Global, 78% of employees with four day weeks are happier and less stressed. But there are business benefits too. Alongside improved productivity, 63% of businesses working to a four day week find it easier to attract and retain talent. So what is it that’s stopping businesses from changing how they work? And how can we all benefit from a four day working week?
Host and Cofruition founder Sam Floy speaks to Charlotte Lockhart, co-founder of 4 Day Week Global, a not-for-profit ushering in the future of work.
If you've listened to the episode and would like to find out more, visit www.4dayweek.com.
For anyone interested in knowing more about the four day week, Charlotte suggested: reading the 4 Day Week book, which you can also find in audiobook format; visiting the 4 Day week website for their resources; and checking out their 'persuade your boss' page, for those all important facts that can convince the people in charge to set up a four day week pilot.
Episode Summary:
Episode Transcript:
Sam Floy
Most people would like to work less and live more. My company coheritionoperates on a 30 hours working week, and I'm always interested in speaking toothers who share this attitude that there's more to life than work. This week'sguest has gone one step further, though. She runs an organization, 4 Day WeekGlobal, that oversees pilot programs for companies interested initiating ashorter work week for their staff without losing the business benefit fits.Research shows that 78% of employees with Four day weeks are happier and lessstressed. But there are business benefits, too. Alongside improvedproductivity, it becomes easier to attract and retain talent with a four dayweek. Obviously, there are caveats. And what ifs? What is it that is stoppingbusinesses from changing how they work? How can we all benefit from a shorterworking week? This is Better Business Radar, a practical and, dare we say,inspiring podcast about smart ways to grow better businesses.
Sam Floy
And I'm Sam Floy, a B2B entrepreneur and founder of Cofruition, the companybehind this podcast, bringing you weekly insights from interesting thinkers,doers, leaders and experts. Today's guest is Charlotte Lockhart, the co founderof Four Day Week Global, a notforprofit community and platform encouraging theadoption of a four day week as part of the future of work. Four Day Week Globalare running pilot projects with businesses around the world, supporting peopleto find a model for reduced working that enables increased productivity and wellbeing within their teams. A four day week does not just mean that everyonetakes Friday off. Instead, it's about reducing the time that employees arerequired to work in a way that's best for business and the individual. Westarted off our conversation with Charlotte exploring this idea of more and howthey're applying this concept to all types of businesses around the world.
Charlotte Lockhart
We set up Four Day Week Global after a really successful pilot program in ourown business, Perpetual Guardian, back in 2018. The response when we talkedabout it in the media was phenomenal. We did research with academics inAuckland as well, to study independently what had happened, and that was reallythe thing that kick started the entire idea, because we had businesses,governments, academics, media, just pretty much everybody just ringing us andsaying, what on earth are you talking about? Now, of course, post pandemic,people understand more that a concept of some form of reduction of work. Theyget a little hung up on it. I can't do a four day week, so that's why we talkmore about a meaningful reduction in work time. We set up Four Day Week Globalreally as a mechanism to house that. We ran a campaign in the US.
Charlotte Lockhart
Which was really interesting. I said to the team, if we run an awarenesscampaign in the US. We need to be careful what we wish for because people mightjust decide that they want help with that. We established our pilot program andwe've been running group pilot programs in 2022 and we've got them in 2023. Werun academic research alongside all of those pilot programs. That's what peoplewill have seen in the media, is when we've been releasing information about thesuccess of those pilot programs.
Sam Floy
Interesting. I imagine there may have been other organizations who will haveexperimented with a meaningful reduction in time. I'm curious, what was themotivating factor for you to then want to create this overarching structure tohelp others?
Charlotte Lockhart
Andrew Barnes and I are in the fortunate position of being able to. Ourbusiness covers our living expenses. We are in a financial position where wecan actually go forward and do something like this. We self fund what you seehere. The pilot programs are now running sufficiently so that our team isactually being funded by the pilot program fees. Andrew and I are able to giveour time and our energy to this as part of that. So some of it was reallyopportunity. We were given an opportunity. Life throws these moments to you ata time when were able to take it up. We felt that there was sufficient, enoughemphasis on reducing the amount of work that we do and the damage that we'redoing to our society and to our population and our planet by working so much.We kind of felt like it was necessary for us to do it.
Sam Floy
Back in 2018, when you decided, okay, we're going to reduce our work time by20%, was that also seeded in this idea of like, we don't have to do this, orwas there an external trigger which said, no, we need to reduce this down?
Charlotte Lockhart
Well, the reason why went down this track is that Andrew read an article thatsaid that productivity in the UK was less than two and a half hours a day. Andhe thought, that's just insane. Why is that? That seems really bizarre. Itbecause people's lives get in the way of them being fully productive at work?If he gave the team more time off, would that fix a problem and start to unlocksome of that productivity that we could have in the workplace? He was onlyreally looking to maintain the productivity that we had in five days, over fourdays. What actually happened was productivity was increased because for a wholemanner of circle of life reasons. He wasn't going down it from a well being orgender pay gap or any of those. All of those things came out of that when hedid it.
Charlotte Lockhart
He was just trying to solve the productivity conundrum and give people moretime off. When you do that, you realize it's so good for their well being andtheir mental health and their families and the gender balance in theorganization and the climate impact on the climate. Because of course, back in2018, were all schlpping our ways to the office rather than so much more of theworking from home that we have now post pandemic. So that was really how westarted. It was just Andrew. We had this crazy idea, very interesting.
Sam Floy
Because it's Cofruition the company that I run, we've been 30 hours a weeksince we started and I think the thing which attracted me to the idea was Idon't want to be spending my whole life working. There's lots more to life thanwork. I find that having, let's say, the constraints of 30 hours a week forcesyou to think about things in a different way. It forces you to say, okay,maybe, how can we be more streamlined? Do we really need to be doing all theseextra activities that actually aren't going to lead to much? As you say,ultimately people's productivity does tail off. I'm curious if you can expandon some of the benefits that have come to businesses from doing this on theproductivity side, perhaps, especially with regards to the UK report that youdid recently.
Charlotte Lockhart
Okay, well, so a couple of points just came out of the statement that you justmade about yourself, actually. One is people will say, oh, I never work instartups, yet there are startups that start up doing it right. So for yoursituation is classic. It's all just a matter of what you're going to do. Theother thing is that people say ones these days, they just don't want to work ashard as we have and you're never going to get succeed in life. Hello, elonMusk. If you don't work 100 hours a day and it's like rubbish, it is justrubbish. I'm a Gen X and my friends are the baby boomers. We worked too hard andyou are our children. The millennials and the Gen Z's are our children. Youwatched us have this overuse of work as something in our lives and you arechoosing to make a different life for yourselves.
Charlotte Lockhart
As humans, we endeavor for our children to have better than we have before andthat's usually better food, better housing, better education, betteropportunities, better health. That's what it's been in the past. In the 21stcentury, all we're offering our children is more. Does everyone in the houseneed their own bathroom? How much food do we really need? Hello, obesityepidemic. There is just so much that we're doing and actually I'm so proud ofthe younger generations because they're saying, I don't need any more of all ofthat stuff. What I want more of is time. You are making choices around that andthat's not just some choices in the way you set up your own businesses, but thechoices and the types of employers that you will go and work for. That's not tosay that you don't want to be productive. You do.
Charlotte Lockhart
You want meaningful work and you want your work to matter. You want to work fororganizations that care about stuff that matters. The young ones are our futureleaders and they are our parents of our grandchildren. If we want our childrento have better, then we have to let them define what better is. It can't befrom our things because we have all of these terms in the workplace aroundgreat resignation and quietly quitting and all these things, which are all thingsthat your generations have named. My generation, guess what? We named Burnout.So we're responsible for that. Your generations saw all of that and havesuffered the consequences of that. That's a consequence on our planet,consequence on our families, consequence on our ability to engage with society.Because what are we going to do with that time? Care for our children, care forour elders, spend time doing things in the community, taking up hobbies.
Charlotte Lockhart
Taking up hobbies is one of the biggest things that we found in our research.We are eating better, we are exercising more. We are looking after ourselvesand our family and our community more. We are using that time in meaningfulways. I'm sure there's probably some of you, some of the people on the four dayweek who are binge watching Netflix on a Friday and every now and then a duvetday is what we need in life. For the large part, people are doing meaningfulthings and what we find so the research that we did is only studies the peoplewho are on a pilot, but what we do, and we're doing research on organizationsthat have been on it for more than the six month pilot. What we're finding isthat people do much more meaningful things with their time off. When they'repast the pilot, they're sure it's going to be a regular amount of time thatthey're going to be able to have.
Charlotte Lockhart
They can settle into new routines. Therefore, for example, if you're wanting todo some further education, you can sign up for that university paper with theknowledge that time is going to be available to you. So people start makingmore permanent plans. The other thing that we're seeing, especially out of theUK pilot, is more fathers having time to spend with their children.
Sam Floy
It's interesting you mentioned Michelle, because that is part of the motivationfor setting up the business as a 30 hours week. I found at least that thediscipline that's required to streamline things and to have people workingproductively meant that I could take three months from the well, end up fourand a half months away from the business when my daughter was born. Now my daybegins after I've cycled over and dropped my daughter off for nursery, go anddo some exercise, come to the office, do five or 6 hours, cycle over, go pickher up. The concept now, having done that, of going back to a formal life, oftaking the tube, working past well, for me, yeah, for me, working past 04:00p.m., my brain just can't do it and I don't really function in that world.
Charlotte Lockhart
Yeah, and let's look at what the things you've done. You've had exercise, whichis good for you've had a stress free start to your day, which is also reallygood for you. You've had quality time with your daughter. Now let's unpack whatthat means for society. A girl who has had a good, strong relationship with herfather is well placed to be a successful person when she grows. And there'sjust research that shows that. The ability for you to have this time with herisn't just nice for you, but it actually is really important for her, as shegrows, to be a strong woman who can make her own choices and will have healthyrelationships. Because we know that children in general, but girlsparticularly, how successful they are in life and how healthy they areemotionally, comes down to the connectedness they have with their maleinfluences, who is obviously largely their fathers.
Charlotte Lockhart
Conversely, when we work too much, we are picking away at that ability tocreate solid people. Just picking on just on the childcare thing. Irrespectiveof the fact that it's lovely for you, it's fantastic for her.
Sam Floy
Well, this is interesting, Charlotte. I was kind of thinking this conversationwould go down the route of how business leaders can be thinking about this intheir own organizations and people get to it. Just very quickly, I did noticethat it was maybe last week that maybe a congressman in California put forwardthe idea of, should it become legislation, that the official work week goesfrom 40 to 32. What are your thoughts on that?
Charlotte Lockhart
Okay, because Peter Dowd has put up private members bill in the UK for the samething. So several thoughts on that. One is we are supporting Mark Ticano's billbecause it's important that these things are talked about. I think it'sprobably widely recognized it won't end up in legislation this time around.This is the second time he's put the bill up. He put it up last year as well,actually. Might have been the end of 2021. Anyway, this is his second attemptat it. It's about keeping going because it's about saying at some point thiswill be successful. In the meantime, by doing it, I am putting myself at theforefront of that conversation. We are having a proper conversation about the amountof time that we're working and where we want in this situation. Even thoughhe's a Californian congressman. It's a federal piece of legislation.
Charlotte Lockhart
This is a nationwide thing for the US. We always support these sort ofinitiatives. The thing that I really do think governments should do and thereare a few states in the US that are doing this and the Portuguese governmentare doing it spanish government are doing it is support a pilot program. Intheir country to establish what are the things that are needed in terms oflegislation and government regulation or support to enable very successfultransition to this. In my view putting 32 hours legislation in first is thecarton for the horse. You really got to work out what that looks like. In theUK we've been running these pilot programs and the UK four day week campaignhas been banging on about it for well they existed before we even came to theparty. I think they've been talking about it since 2015.
Charlotte Lockhart
They came out of a very very left leaning and out of the labor movement butthey have pulled themselves more into the center because they've recognizedthat this is a conversation that businesses having to your point I thought we'dtalk about business. This is a conversation that businesses having irrespectiveof what government will or won't do, businesses finding that it wants to doreduced our modeling for whatever reasons they want to. The only comment Iwould have about Peter Dowd piece of legislation is that when he put out hispress release he said because by then we'd released our results from our US andIrish pilot he said it has been proven that reducing work time increasesproductivity. We don't support that statement because we actually believe thatwhen you focus in on productivity you can reduce work time. You have to beclear about productivity first.
Charlotte Lockhart
If you just reduce work time Parkinson's Law just gets in the way and peoplerevert to old habits. They need that incentive to and clear direction aroundwhat does work look like when I work less hours, very good.
Sam Floy
At Parkinson's law being work will meet the time that's fitted. Cool. Well,this is interesting that you talk about this legislative discussion that'shappening. Also the thing that I find quite motivating, and you obviously haveexperienced this as well, is when you're a leader in a business, you are incharge of your own little ecosystem. If you want to say we're doing a 30 hourswork week or whatever, then you largely have the ability to do that. I alwaysfind it interesting. I grew up with the notion that 40 hours a week is thenorm, and then you read into the history and in the early 20th century, it wassix day work week. Henry Ford comes in you'll know this better than I do, butmy understanding is Henry Ford comes in, says, oh, we're going to just do 40hours a week. And suddenly that's the paradigm.
Sam Floy
This idea that there can be no paradigms.
Charlotte Lockhart
Yeah, I mean, the weekend is largely a constructive after the Second World Warand we started to rebuild our society and the way we ran things. And werecognized that having time off. Legislation in the UK and Europe, New Zealandand around the world started to start valuing the 40 hours work week. If youthink about it, our lives were very different in those days. Our society wasconstructed differently. In general, mum didn't work, so therefore she's doingall of the stuff in the community and managing the household and all of thethings that necessary to run a family and the home and engaging in thecommunity and dad work, but not necessarily very far from home. Family mealswere had together, even though with the advent of the television, that kind ofcrept in as being in front of the TV as opposed to around the dinner table.
Charlotte Lockhart
Weekends were spent doing things as a family and doing chores and actuallyworking together as a family. Holidays, even though we had less of them backthen, weren't about where is the WiFi? We went on proper family holidays andhad proper family time. So we don't have that connectedness anymore. The 40hours week is actually a figment. That's why we talk about removing theconversation around the four day week. We have a principle called the 100 and 8000rule. It's 100% pay, 80% time, 100% productivity. The reason for that is thatit recognizes that not everybody works a 40 hours work week anyway. If we bringin legislation for a 32 hours work week, that's not helping me if I'm 60 hours.It's not helping me if I'm 20. The principle allows us to understand how wevalue time and money and productivity in a ratio way that gives businesses theability to have a meaningful reduction in work time.
Charlotte Lockhart
If you're working over 40 hours, then it's like, well, how about we just tryand get down to 40?
Sam Floy
Yeah, okay, let's talk about this. Let's say a business leader or a company,they're thinking about this, they're saying, okay, well, we'd like to try thisout. Talk us through. So you'd recommend doing a pilot first. What would be thebest way to run such a pilot?
Charlotte Lockhart
We developed the pilot program for a number of reasons. One is try before youbuy, work out what the reduction in time model is for your business. For somebusinesses, and let's face it, most of the businesses that do this do a fourday week. But that's because they're the early adopters. They've heard thename, they're going, yep, I can close on a Friday or a Monday and a Fridaythey've hopped on board with that and they've gone down that road. Now we'reexperiencing more and more businesses going, well, I just can't do that.Therefore, it's about how you find the way to engage with your people, engagewith your customers, and understand what the business imperatives are thatyou're trying to achieve so that whatever you do ends up being sustainable.Now, some businesses pilot a simple thing and that works for them straight awayand that's what they go off into the sunset with.
Charlotte Lockhart
Others try a 30 hours work week with everybody coming in five days, ordifferent people having different amounts of time off. I'm a big fan offlexibility in it because you want to take your daughter to childcare eachmorning and you want to pick her up, so you want five days so that you can havethat bit that you do with your time off. If I'm an empty nester and my kids areall gone, then I'm more interested in having Wednesdays off because that wayyou can always say that I've got tomorrow off or I have yesterday off. You'reonly ever working two days at a time and so it's actually quite restful interms of the pace of life you'll be able to shut down more often. So, yeah,that's what we recommend with the pilot programs. It allows you to test it out.
Charlotte Lockhart
Now the other reason why you do it, and as you said, if you're the businessowner, it's your decision. You can just make it as Andrew did. Our board foundout about it when he announced it on breakfast television. For most businesses,they do actually have to get something like this approved either by theleadership team, depending on how low down the person is that is looking to doit, or by the board. It's easier for a board to go, okay, we're prepared to tryit and see, and you show us, you prove to us that the results are there andthen we'll do it. It's a tricky thing for a board, especially if a board'sreporting to external shareholders to just jump in and go, yeah, that's okay.It's also one of the reasons why we do the academic research, because it'simportant that people have independence in that reporting that isn't connectedto their own.
Charlotte Lockhart
Yeah, this is how we found it. It's been great. Often boards want more thanthat.
Sam Floy
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Sam Floy
10% off the setup of your show. The link is also in the episode description.Now back to the episode. There's this not putting the cart for the horse, thisthing around the productivity. My understanding of it is we have thisParkinson's law where people will just end up working the time that'savailable. I was quite curious when you said there's this almost analysis oraudit piece of identifying where the productivity gains could be or these sortsof things. Could you help expand on how you might run that process?
Charlotte Lockhart
Pilot programs are always bottom up lead and so therefore what people are doingis they're looking at what happens in their day, in their week, in their team,in their division, and they're just looking for those anomalies that are there.It depends on the type of job, if it's an office space or if it'smanufacturing. In the office, one of the biggest things that gets in the way ofpeople being able to be productive is there's no time for deep work, there's notime for finishing off a project without and we all know the impacts on ourproductivity when we're constantly interrupted. It's about creating a workplacethat allows us to work efficiently. In every business, there will be thingsthat your staff know could be done better, but they just don't bother withsaying anything about it, because if they can get it done in the week that theyhave, the time they have available, the time you're paying them for, you'reexpecting them to turn up for, so they don't really focus in on them.
Charlotte Lockhart
You shorten the amount of time they focus in on those things, but then theyalso start looking for other things that the unknowns, the things, okay, well,okay, so I've cut that out because that was just a complete waste of time. I'mdoing this way, but she's doing it that way. I reckon I should be doing it theway she's doing. People share ideas around how they do things more efficientlyand they work together to find ways of being more productive within thebusiness. Therefore what you're doing is you're engineering your business fromthe bottom up.
Sam Floy
I see way more ownership and engagement when this happens. I find in terms ofthat bottom up approach often if you're running a business, you want at leastmy view of the world is you don't want it to be a strict hierarchy where ordersslow down and people just do things you want people to feel. That ownership. Ithink what I quite like about what you're saying is it gives people theautonomy to say how can you do your job? How do you want to do your job better.I think that's going back to your point on ensuring that people remain engaged,I think there's this that piece comes through as well, I imagine.
Charlotte Lockhart
Yeah, absolutely. Because people have to feel safe to be able to do that. Ifyou said to your people in your business, hey guys, I want you to be moreproductive, and I'm bringing in these time emotion people and theseconsultants, and we just need the business to be more productive, all yourpeople here is, you want me to do more with less. Layoffs are on the way andthey feel unsafe and they feel like you're criticizing them and that you don'tthink that they're doing a good job and they just feel really unsupported. Ifyou say to them, hey guys, let's do this pilot program, because if we can findway to be more productive, you guys can go home, then people go, Right, wherecan we start? You've got to let them run it. One of the interesting things Ihear from business leaders is I love coming to work now.
Charlotte Lockhart
Everyone's so engaged and people are just so much happier and they're so muchmore engaged with work and being at work. And I just really enjoy it. In fact,actually, one of our academics at Cambridge University, he was saying he's beenstudying well being in the workplace as a sociologist for decades, and hemostly speaks to really grumpy people. And he loves this piece of research.Don't stop, leave me on this project, because all he does now is talk to happypeople. It's that thing that starts to feed into it. And why are people happy?They're getting more sleep. We know that from the research they are lessstressed. We know that from the research, there's less fatigue. So health wise,they are much better. They are happier at home, they're happier at work becausethey feel like they know why they're there. Let's think about it.
Charlotte Lockhart
It's not complicated psychology to understand that when people know that whythey come to work, how to do their job, and they're empowered to get it done,they feel better about being there. Even though people go, I had CharlieMullins laid into me on a TV thing, I was lazy and everything. I'm like, no,you're missing the point around actually why it works is because it's a happycircle and it feeds on each other. It's not just about people being lazy andit's not just about, he thinks I'm going to ruin the economy. Apart from thefact that the companies that do our pilot programs find that productivityeither stays the same or goes.
Sam Floy
Up, I love that point about making the safe space around it. This idea of ifyou're in this environment of X number of 40 hours a week, whatever, and we.Just want more and more, then any suggestion that reduces your amount of timeis viewed as laziness or whatever. Certainly all these insights and these ideasget suppressed out of view of wanting to be seen to.
Sam Floy
Be.
Sam Floy
Putting 100% effort in or whatever it is. I think it's such a lovely way ofseeing it.
Charlotte Lockhart
You become a person that sends lots of emails and walks around the office witha clipboard, right? You become a person who always ends up trying to look busyand people go, But I work 60 hours a week. I'm like, Are you productive for 60hours a week or are you busy for 60 hours a week? And there's a differencebetween busyness and.
Sam Floy
Productivity and there really is this I hadn't clicked the generational thing,Charlotte, if I'm honest. Now you mentioned it, there's a lot of things aroundyou. There's more to life than work and being able to create these environmentswhere you come to work, you give it your all, you're really productive, butthen you're right, you have this ability to say, well, look at 03:00, I'm goinghome now. To be in an environment where that's fine if there's someonelistening who has let's call them an old school boss, or someone who's doesn'tthink they'd naturally jump at the idea of a four day week. Obviously, we coulddo a pilot, but are there any phrases or analogies or things that you foundthat are quite good to get people to open their mind a little?
Charlotte Lockhart
Yeah, we have how to persuade Your boss on our website, actually, so it wouldcertainly be worthwhile popping into that. Look, your boss wants a bit well,two things. Depends. If your boss owns the business as well, then there's of,this is how I want to work, so I want everybody to work the same way as I wantto work. Therefore, you've got to actually understand why your boss seems towant to work ridiculous hours. Also, then there's this whole, I had to workreally hard to get to where I am and that's the natural pathway. This is why wedo the research. Download the research off our website and have a good,thorough read through it and then look at what some of the points are in thatyou think would apply to your boss. What are some of the triggers that youcould use that your boss would be receptive to?
Charlotte Lockhart
Then, realistically, what you're saying to them is, look, if it's true, as itseems to be with this research, that our business can be just as productivewith us working less time, can we run a pilot to give that a go? You've got tolay the groundwork around what some of the statistics are, but the reality isthe numbers don't lie. One of the women from one of our Australian pilots, shesaid her board were really skeptical, but they ran their pilot program andshe's like, the numbers don't lie. In the end, it's all about the numbers.There are people who go on the pilot program, there are bosses who go on thepilot program who do it just purely for mental health and well being reasonsfor their staff. They are actually ambivalent about the productivity. They are,as you can imagine, in the minority, but they exist and they're the same bossesthat allow flexible and remote and they're just all over this whole thing.
Charlotte Lockhart
There are bosses that come on that do it very prescriptively. You will notanswer emails between this time and meetings in the week or from here to here.Now, that can set you up for failure because we've already talked about it.You've got to let your people help you design it. You can suggest from the Csuite, but you have to understand your boss to understand what are going to bethe triggers that will get her or him going on this. In the end it's going tobe the numbers that don't lie.
Sam Floy
Everyone likes the try before you buy approach.
Charlotte Lockhart
This is just as with legislation and things, it's easier for an organization togo, we can pilot this and before we start looking at anything official oranything that we have to change contracts in or anything like that. It's aprocess for your customers as well. There'll be people out there going, I don'tknow how I get my customers to agree to this. Actually, generally when you runa pilot program, customers do come along, they might need some handholding toget there. This is why you're piloting, to find out how you can make that workfor yourselves and for them, I.
Sam Floy
Guess different with different companies, but I guess you'd say so and so isnot working Fridays anymore because we're trialing a four day week. Do you findthat separate? Because I get it from an employee attraction and retentionaspect. On the delivery side of a business, is there anything have you comeacross instances where that's perhaps been a worry for the clients?
Charlotte Lockhart
Yes, time off is really important when it comes to client delivery. Right. Itmight not be Fridays, let's face it, because that means there's three days whenyour client doesn't have a response. There's one company in the UK that doesWednesdays off because they worked on the basis that means there's always gotteam there Monday Tuesday, and they've always got team there Thursday Friday.If something happens for a client on a Wednesday, they've still got two days todeal with it. That was the approach that they took and their client base wereable to accept that and went really well, some organizations do Mondays off andFridays off, or something similar to what you're doing at Perpetual Guardian.It's fully flexible, it's a reduced hour work week, and your team work out howyou do your deliverables. And the time off flows from that. Your customers areand you might find that you want to engage with your clients ahead of time andsay, look, we're looking to do this.
Charlotte Lockhart
Realistically, all that a client's ever wanting is a clear pathway to a solution.It might be as simple as a quality auto response that says, I don't workWednesdays, I'll be back on Thursday. But Charlotte's around. If your need isreally urgent, email or call her and she knows what's going on. Most businessesfind that doing this teaming up of resource makes the business more resilientanyway, because let's face it, Sam, you're going to take your annual leave atsome point anyway, so the customers still need a pathway when you're on leave.If you get sick, they still need a pathway. Actually what you're doing ismaking your business more resilient by having that pathway of sharingresponsibilities throughout your entire organization all of the time. So it'sworthwhile doing.
Sam Floy
Yeah, it's interesting you've been able to put into very eloquent terms some ofthose slightly messy thoughts I've been having around these sorts of things ofif the only way that people know how to do things is in one person's head, it'snot a very robust system. That's why people end up having to be on emails wholetime and all that stuff, and that.
Charlotte Lockhart
Person leads your organization and it's complicated if you don't. Actually, inthe end, what you can find is that your customer deliverables and your customerservice actually goes up because you've created this better way of engagingwith them and this better way of delivering the service to them. An example isactually an accountancy firm in Perth, and when they did this, actually, someof their people said, what, I would prefer to work weekends. They're now anaccountancy practice that manages small to medium sized businesses that's openseven days. How many SMEs would love it if their accountant could ask theycould ask their accountant questions on the weekend when they're not trying todo their own deliverable. Their service proposition has actually gone upwithout increasing the number of people, but they're just delivering theirservice in a different way.
Sam Floy
Very interesting. Okay, if we look slightly to the future, what's next for thecampaign? What's next for 40 week Global?
Charlotte Lockhart
We are running campaigns throughout the world this year. We've got another UKcampaign coming up. We're running Australasia. South Africa is underway.Europe, we've got a European pilot underway at the moment, and we're doing apilot for the Portuguese government. We've got North American and Brazil on theway. Where we're aiming to be is that by the end of the year, you will be ableto do a pilot program anywhere in the world, no matter where you are, no matterwhat company that you have, we will be able to do that. We've reformed the waywe do our pilot program. We've got our group pilot program, which is the thingthat we're known for, but we've actually developed a self guided and digitalresource. For some small businesses, they just want to jump in and get on withit. All the materials are in our community, which we run out of Notion withCircle, and then we have our one one coaching, which we're doing a lot more ofnow.
Charlotte Lockhart
That's for larger organizations that actually want one of our team to help themdesign and monitor their pilot as they go along. That becomes the way we do it.We have our community that we've developed in circle and notion. Anyone that isdoing a four day week can come into that. They can talk to you, Sam, with whatyou're doing, and they can talk to Mary over here and Ahmed over here and justlook at all of the various different options and ask questions of thecommunity, not just be reliant upon what we hear and what we say. What we'redoing with that is also encouraging. Businesses that have done the four dayweek, but not necessarily one of our pilot programs, but they've successfullydone it, getting them to join what we're calling our fellowship. They can comein and they can be part of the global conversation as well.
Sam Floy
Very exciting.
Charlotte Lockhart
Yeah.
Sam Floy
Cool.
Charlotte Lockhart
Four day week, whole world. That's my plan. World domination easy.
Sam Floy
I said that slightly flippantly, but actually you're going about in a very goodway, I think, setting up these abilities to do these pilots. I can really seethe ripple effects of these sorts of things. That's fantastic. I find as welljust the like mindedness of being able to not have to explain why you wouldwant to do this and just straightaway go into talking. Like when I speak toother friends who are running businesses who have a similar approach, you justskip it's quite a good litmus test for just being able to talk about otherviews on how you want to run the business and all those sorts of things. Soit's really useful. I'd like to finish with a couple of quick fire questions.
Sam Floy
Sure.
Sam Floy
I'll let you define what I mean by industry, but who inspires you in yourindustry?
Charlotte Lockhart
Yes. Given that we have four day Week and then we have Perpetual Guardian, wehave a wine business and everything, but I actually have to say this mightsound like a real cop out, but the person that inspires me the most is mypartner, Andrew Barnes. He has such a brain on him. He is so inventive with theway that he can find business solutions. And, I mean, he's quite amazing.
Sam Floy
I've got a slight idea about what the answer is going to be to this, but whatis an invaluable book or resource that someone who wants to learn more aboutthis pace should catch a go to?
Charlotte Lockhart
Absolutely. So Andrew Barnes did write a book. You can buy it off our websiteand Amazon if you want to listen. He read the audiobook so you can listen tohis dolph tones, read it to you. So we have a book there. Alex Peng, ourbusiness partner, also has written a book called Shorter. There are resourceson our website. There's the research papers, our white paper. There's all sortsof things. We also run information sessions on a regular basis. There's a briefversion of one on the website so you can see Alex talking to an overview of thepilot program. Just sign up for one of the information sessions.
Sam Floy
Amazing stuff.
Sam Floy
Cool.
Sam Floy
Well, Charlotte, it's been really great. Thank you so much.
Charlotte Lockhart
Really appreciate it.
Sam Floy
Thank you for joining me for this episode of Better Business Radar. It's beengreat to speak with Charlotte about the four Day work week. If you'd like tofind out more about Four Day Week global, visit fourdayweek.com. The link is inthe episode description. If you enjoyed the episode and would like moreinsights from leading thinkers and doers who can help you be smart in growingyour business, please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Sam Floy.This has been better business, Radar. See you next week.
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