“We had some clients who were upset,” says Swift, whose team works on single-family, multifamily, student-housing, and commercial builds, and interior design projects across the country. “They didn’t think we would be as accessible.”

To calm concerns, Swift leveraged a favorite analogy to explain why his company dropped a full day of work: “That’s like telling the team at Chick-fil-A they need to be open on Sunday. It is always busy; It moves with complete fluidity. Chick-fil-A crushes what McDonald’s does. We had to retrain ourselves and our clients.”

At BSB, employing a four-day schedule is about making space for rest and recovery, while optimizing efficiency and efficacy during the work week. Swift says the fear that BSB employees would work less and be less productive became a non-issue. The company was more productive, made more money, and retained talent more consistently. “The four-day work week is not conditional,” says Swift. “It’s a mindset.”

The ethos has piqued interest across industries, including tech, healthcare, finance, retail, and even government, as hybrid and remote work are the norm in our economy. Plus, with the World Health Organization’s 2019 confirmation that burnout is real, there’s never been more of a push to prioritize mental health, overall wellness, and deep rest. 

BSB isn’t alone in finding success with the model. In 2019, Microsoft Japan implemented a month-long trial of four-day operations, resulting in a 40% jump in sales and a 23% drop in electricity costs. New Zealand-based financial services firm Perpetual Guardian did the same in 2018 while, for a time in 2019, fast-food chain Shake Shack gave it a go in select locations for managers across the U.S. with successful outcomes. 

“The trial results and evidence are clear,” says Vishal Reddy, executive director at WorkFour, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing the four-day workweek in the United States. “It’s really possible for an organization to meet the same numbers but also deliver on benefits for employees.”

Juliet Schor is an economist and professor of sociology at Boston College. Since 2022, she has been researching companies that have shifted to a 32-hour, four-day schedule. When asked what industries stand to benefit most from the setup, Schor says she’s seen successful examples in nearly every industry. “My feeling is, it’s less about industry than it is about other things,” says Schor. “Anywhere there’s been a lot of technological innovation without work-time reduction, or where we see a lot of emotional burnout, they’re finding this really effective.” 

While Schor’s research shows the most obvious industries to benefit include nursing, mental health counseling, architecture, public relations, hospitality, and retail, any company implementing a 32-hour, four-day week should also carefully consider workflow, logistics, and culture as equally important levers to pull.

A four-day schedule can offer employees an opportunity for true rest when it comes to what some refer to as “burnout industries” (including nonprofits, finance, education, and healthcare). The nonprofit 4C Health has delivered primary care, crisis, behavioral, and mental health services across 14 rural communities in central Indiana for more than 40 years. Its leadership team emerged from the pandemic in 2022 with a keen understanding of just how spent their providers were. “I felt we needed to be transformative beyond the typical salary increases, adding an extra holiday to our benefit offerings, or work social perks that did not impact the quality of life for our staff,” says 4C CFO Jason Cadwell. 

As a lean organization with a high-performance culture, Cadwell says, 4C Health pivoted 90% of its staff to a four-day schedule. The remaining 10% operated on either a three-day, 36-hour week (typical for healthcare professionals) or were in leadership roles and had the freedom and flexibility to manage their four-day schedule at will.

Part of the process, says Cadwell, involved trimming unnecessary meetings, trading email overload for a practice of efficient two-minute phone calls, operating on a staggered schedule (Monday to Thursday or Tuesday to Friday) to cover all operating hours, and leveraging hybrid work to cut down on commuting hours and unused office space when possible. 

Collectively, Cadwell says, employees reclaimed 250,000 hours in their personal lives and reported a 75% reduction in stress, while 73% of 4C healthcare staff felt they delivered better patient care under the four-day paradigm than under a five-day schedule. And, the organization saw a 64% increase in applicants for open jobs, experienced 10% less turnover, and didn’t lose a cent on its bottom line.  

For companies like BSB Design that are client-facing or operate on billable hours, a four-day schedule offers what Swift calls “the gift of constraint.” Because there’s less time to do the same amount of work, Swift says, his team is more efficient and effective, often delivering better work to clients than they would have under longer workweeks. 

Swift’s teams use a practice borrowed from 19th century French design studios called “charrettes” to spend targeted time on-site with clients in three-day collaborative meetings to execute specific project objectives. When BSB employees aren’t with clients, they’re in-office on Mondays and Thursdays, with two team huddles per day—at 10 a.m. and 4 p.m., lasting anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes and done standing. On Tuesdays and Wednesdays, staff work from home. “Teams have enough time to collaborate in person, but also enough time to stay focused with great urgency and effectiveness,” says Swift. “Nothing is left to chance.”

For creative industries (marketing, consulting, advertising, and tech companies, for instance) focused on project work or innovation, the 32-hour, four-day week can allow employees to develop strategic recovery practices amid client-facing or “always-on” work. 

At consulting firm Exos, the company has created the Readiness Culture Code, involving microbreaks, You Do You Fridays, a reframe of the company’s meeting culture, and grouping tasks by day to avoid task-switching fatigue. “It’s about how you structure overall recovery,” says CEO Sarah Robb O’Hagan. “You Do You days can look different for every employee, whether you take the day to go hiking to recharge or use it as a catch-up day for deep, thoughtful work, since collaborative work with colleagues on these days is not permitted. The power of this flexibility and freedom contributed to the overall success of the pilot.” 

Tech company Wildbit has a similar approach, prioritizing intense focus during the company’s four work days, and leaning into deep rest for the following three days, whether on a Monday to Thursday or Tuesday to Friday schedule.

No matter the setup, Swift, Cadwell, O’Hagan, and others stress that the overall focus is the actual work, not the hours worked. That is, framing the workweek around the quality of work, customer needs, and employee sustainability is the through-line across industries in all of these examples. 

For Swift, most importantly, the four-day workweek isn’t a best practice—it’s much more, he says. He notes that the four-day schedule has changed how he thinks about his business, company culture, and ultimately what BSB provides for its employees and clients. “When things are working, you can’t imagine it can be better,” he says. “That’s the problem with best practices. It takes off the table what is possible. I am the kind of guy who thinks I haven’t come this far only to come this far.”

Fast Company

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