In this episode, Joe O'Connor, CEO and co-founder of Work Time Reduction, discusses the benefits of a four-day work week. He explains how reduced work hours can increase employee happiness, enhance talent retention, and surprisingly boost productivity. Joe addresses common misconceptions, the importance of careful implementation, and provides strategies for individuals to advocate for a shorter work week within their organizations. This session is especially beneficial for mid-career professionals looking to balance work and life more effectively.

Speaker Links:

Website: Work Time Reduction - https://worktimereduction.com/

Follow Joe on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joeoconnor990

Learn More:

If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy my Life Satisfaction Assessment. It's a 30-minute program where I guide you through a deep dive into 10 areas of your life to assess what's bringing you joy and what's bringing you down. I call it Derailed and it's a fabulous place to begin a joy-at-work redesign.

https://www.midlifeunstuck.com/derailed

One way to increase joy at work is to spend less time at work

so that you can spend more time at life.

If that idea grabs you and you wonder whether a shorter working week might

work for you and your company, you need to listen to our next guest.

Joe O'Connor is the CEO and co founder of the company Work Time Reduction.

He shares results from the global research on four day work weeks, discusses some of

the obstacles, and most importantly, gives you ideas on how to start playing with

the idea of a shorter work week yourself so that you can be persuasive when

you talk about it within your company.

Let's dive in.

Joe, many mid career professionals are pausing to evaluate different

styles of working in order for them to balance out their work and life goals.

One of those is simply reducing time spent at work.

You've led loads of research into the four day working week.

Can you share some of the results that you find?

Sure.

So what we've seen in a number of global trials of the four day work

week is that the organizations who have adopted this, number one, they

have happier, healthier employees.

Number two, they find it easier to attract and to retain talent.

And number three, quite surprisingly for a lot of people, if you design

this and position it correctly, this can actually also boost productivity.

And that really comes down to the fact that the way that we talk about,

think about and measure productivity.

In today's world of work is really quite outdated.

Its a vestige of the industrial revolution.

And often it incentivizes performative busyness and long

hours over output and over results.

So for organizations that actually use work time reduction to shift

their organization more towards a focus on outcomes over inputs.

They can actually really boost their productivity.

We need more of that, but there seems to be a bit of a

disconnect and it may just be my world, but in a world where companies

are often represented as operating a culture of wanting more for less.

Work time reduction seems to oppose that, refreshingly so.

tell me more.

I think you're right.

I do hope and believe that the pendulum is starting to shift a

little bit in the right direction.

I think COVID was a real game changer.

I think it led to employees, really reevaluating the things that were

important in life, which I know is a big part of the work that you do.

It led to, I think, employers and leaders, for many being much more

open minded to new ways of working.

And I think that momentum has really carried over in terms of

the growth and adoption we've seen for shorter work week models.

This is still something that is still relatively novel in most industries,

but it is growing and I think it will continue to grow particularly with

the advent of artificial intelligence.

I truly believe that.

When I first started talking about this about six years ago, most people

thought that the idea of a four day work week was some kind of a pie

in the sky, unachievable notion.

I would counter that the people that believe that we should be working as

much today in the age of AI as we were 30 years ago, they're the real radicals.

That's the real pie in the sky idea that we need to really

push back against and challenge.

And there must be, so tell me some of the hindrances.

to work time reduction that you must hear day in day out in your work

I think one of the big myths and misconceptions is this idea

that it's a one size fits all model that you know Moving to a shorter work

week effectively means everybody has fridays off But in actuality, there

are a whole load of different ways to implement this It doesn't necessarily

mean the business shutting down for a day.

We've seen organizations adopted with split shifts, rosters,

schedules to maintain that service coverage through the work week.

I would say in terms of the biggest challenges to adoption, I do think

a big part of this is mindset.

I do think that organizations with leaders who have a more command

and control directional style of leadership are probably not going

to be among this early adapter phase that we're currently experiencing.

I also think that sometimes, there is an underestimation of what's

required to be a four day a week company in a five day a week world.

This is not a light switch.

This is something that requires careful planning, intentionality.

It's not something that a CEO can wake up on a Monday morning and

say, This Friday, where we're moving to a four day work week, it really

does require a lot of thinking.

And really, it requires involving people from the bottom up.

This is most effective and most sustainable when it's a bottom up process,

improvement and innovation initiative.

And you really empower your people to come up with the ideas, the solutions.

The changes to work practices that are necessary in order to make this work,

the most detail oriented CEO in the world does not know enough about the

day to day intricacies of each of their employees jobs well enough to dictate.

Here's what you need to do in order to redesign it.

So those are just a couple of the misconceptions and

challenges that sometimes we come up against for these models.

Oh, this is fascinating.

This is utterly fascinating.

So someone is listening to this and it's their first introduction to The

possibility of a four day week beyond the, just a passing regard for it.

What can they do, an individual in an organization, what can they do

themselves to either play with the idea of the four day week or somehow

move it forward, experimentally for themselves, what can they do?

So I think if the objective is you want to position this idea

and try to persuade your boss or your management to seriously consider it.

I would recommend number one, coming to the table with solutions.

So think about what are the possible efficiencies, what are

the changes that we could make in order to actually accommodate this?

I think an employer is likely to be much more open to it if you're taking that

very proactive, serious approach to it.

I think you need to think about what's in it for them.

You need to think about actually how could this help solve the challenges

that my organization is facing?

Are they struggling to?

Attract talent because maybe they can't pay top dollar.

Are people burning out?

Is there an issue with, driving innovation and employee engagement?

So thinking about what are the things that would actually appeal to my employer?

And how might this actually help to unlock that?

I would say be open to the idea that this may need to be conditional so

that this may need to be tied to, in order for a shorter work week to work.

We need to achieve certain service standards, we need to hit certain goals.

That this is really something that needs to be positioned as a win-win and

a shared benefit that could maybe make them more comfortable with the idea.

I would say talk to your colleagues, if this is something that's a collective

demand rather than an individual request, it maybe a little bit more powerful.

So yeah, there, there's a whole load of different ways.

In terms of an individual, I would say some of the things you could start

doing is identifying where and when you're multitasking and attack it.

Multitasking is typically the enemy of productivity and most organizations

start to use time blocking to really make sure, there was some research

this week from Atlassian that suggested that 65 percent of knowledge workers

feel that actually attacking their to do list and having good email hygiene

is more important than spending time progressing their highest value priority.

So it really means that if the only thing that's in your calendar is your meetings.

Then really what you're saying is that's the thing that matters most.

But in fact, in most organizations, that isn't the case.

You need to use time blocking to make sure that you're really investing

enough time into the things that will really move the needle in your own work.

And if you do that, and you do it effectively, and you get better at

managing your time, you may not have a four day work week, but you may be

able to work less and get more done and be able to get home in the evening

to enjoy dinner with your family, rather than working into the night.

And that sounds like joy at work for me.

If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy my Life Satisfaction Assessment.

It's a 30 minute program where I guide you through a deep dive into 10 areas

of your life to assess what's bringing you joy and what's bringing you time.

I call it D.

It's a fabulous place to begin a joy at work redesign.