As leaders, the first question we always get when we tell people that we successfully adopted a 4-day workweek at our company is: How did you measure performance and success?
As client services professionals in PR, we are used to the KPI question. We get it constantly when it comes to evaluating the impact of earned media. What has been surprising, though, is realizing that the answer we give to the KPI question is remarkably similar for both PR and our implementation of a shorter workweek.
In both cases: 1) quality always trumps quantity; and 2) it takes time—and consistent effort—to see the incredible impact that either a press strategy or a culture benefit can truly have on a company.
1) Quality over quantity
When we started hearing about the idea of 32-hour or 4-day workweek trials, we immediately began researching how we could adopt a version for Daly.
We joined webinars hosted by 4 Day Work Week Global, and spent months reading news articles and case studies to learn more about what was working (and not working) for the companies at the forefront of this movement.
Initially, we could only find examples featuring companies that were not client-facing, and much bigger than Daly—two of the main obstacles we faced in considering our own plan. (In fact, most smaller, client-facing agencies in industries like ours had shared stories about struggling to make their trial program work in a sustainable way.) After joining a webinar that specifically showcased client-facing agencies’ wins and challenges with implementing versions of the program, we finally saw our own path to a shortened workweek—one that worked for our team and our clients, and felt authentic to how we ran our business.
At the core of the shortened workweek movement is an inherent belief in the benefits of quality over quantity in the span of a workweek. Once we understood this, everything clicked into place.
Here’s what our adapted shortened workweek program looks like:
Back in 2021, we experimented with expanding our existing Summer Fridays program into “Forever Summer Fridays,” extending those early dismissals for the full year. This was a huge hit with the team, and brought us down to an already-shortened 37.5-hour workweek.
Come 2023, we realized we weren’t so far away from the 32-hour work week that’s the hallmark of the shortened workweek movement—and devised a way to give it a proper try, launching what we coined “Slow Down Time,” or SDT.
With SDT, we shaved an additional 5.5 hours throughout the week, to officially reach the 32-hour mark. Newly offline time within Slow Down Time includes Monday mornings, Friday afternoons, and the last 30 mins of the day Monday through Thursday.
This adjustment provides a gentler entry and exit point to the weekend, and gives our full team more time at the end of the day to ease into post-work personal time, while still providing full-week coverage for our clients.
While the intention is to allow employees the flexibility to take the SDT periods entirely off, we do make exceptions in the case of time-sensitive emails or tasks. To get more specific—during the Monday morning and Friday afternoon SDT periods, employees are expected to use their own reasonable judgment to assess whether an urgent client or journalist email requires a response outside of the SDT hours. That’s where our all-important client services intuition comes into play, and also emphasizes the importance of trusting our team to make their own decisions regarding their time.
We operationalized the program, codified it in our Operations Manual, and kicked off a proper trial in June 2023.
2) It takes time (and patience) to see real impact
Consistent research shows that a shortened work week leads to overall better health for employees. But we knew we wouldn’t see this impact overnight, and gave ourselves the space to make mistakes, troubleshoot, and learn as we went.
After our six-month trial, we looked toward the two most important factors in Daly’s business—our employees, and our clients—to determine whether the program was a success.
On the employee side, we polled our team for thoughts and feedback on the program, and got an overwhelming number of positive responses that identified the specific benefits that SDT had provided for them:
“SDT—especially the late start Mondays—has helped with my stress levels, time management, and overall productivity & motivation.”
“I’m now able to use Monday mornings to do things in my personal life that will set the stage for a more mindful and intentional work week.”
“The opportunity to slowly dive into the week makes it much less daunting, and starting work on Monday afternoon is something I now actively look forward to.”
On the client side we looked at our contract reengagement rates as our primary way to monitor the effect of SDT on our clients’ overall satisfaction. We were pleased to find that our rate of reengagement with existing clients—as well as the rate of newly signed clients—was higher in Q3 and Q4 2023 than in almost any other period in Daly’s company history.
We learned that work will fill the space that you give it, and that can drive burnout. If we can condense the workweek, we can still deliver excellent client services and maintain productivity, but start giving time back to employees for their non-work life.
With that said—it’s all a process. Regular check-ins and evaluation points are key to ensuring a team is always maintaining a balance between efficiency and thoroughness in all that they do. For us, we’ve assessed our own KPIs, employment engagement and feedback, and determined the program to be a huge success, and have extended it into 2024. Let’s see where the year takes us.
For anyone considering adopting their own version of a shortened workweek, we suggest you consider this: When you measure success of a program, what are you really measuring?
As with client services, measuring the success of a culture offering or benefit is never as straightforward as tracking UVMs, or assessing ROI. It requires a considered, honest look at your core values and goals as a company, and how to support the people, systems, and work that gets you where you’ve always wanted to be.
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