A Yr And a Half Later, Here’s How The 4 Day Workweek is Going at Buffer

When we experimented with a four-day work week, it initially lasted a month. As our CEO Joel Gascoigne, wrote about it in May 2020 When we started the experiment, “this 4-day workweek is about wellbeing, mental health and putting us as people and our families first.”

Joel’s April 2020 four-day week announcement.

At the end of May, while we were collecting data on the course of the experiment, we continued to work a four-day work week. After seeing in June that overall results were good for us, we switched to a four-day work week for the remainder of 2020. Our team was surprised by these results as they expected a naturally reduced productivity with fewer working days. Our chief of staff at the time Carolyn Kopprasch, wrote:

“Because the intent was to temporarily relieve teammates of typical expectations during what is a particularly tough and unprecedented time, we have not set any productivity or results targets. In fact, we expected a noticeable drop in productivity due to short-time work.

However, many of you have reported that your weekly productivity was not all that different due to the increased rest and reflection, and that your work quality was higher while you experienced improved overall well-being.”

In the end, we switched to a four-day week for the foreseeable future end of 2020.

Now we’re three months away from having worked a four-day week for two years. We recently conducted an internal survey to find out with the Buffer team how many days they work, if they feel happier and more productive, and finally if they are able to complete the work they are asked to do in four days .

Here are the results:

91% of our team are happier and more productive working four days a week

This is great data for us — 91 percent of our teammates either agree or strongly agree that now that they have a four-day week, they’re happier and more productive than the remaining 9 percent in their chosen one scale “neutral.”

This was our hope when we first started experimenting with a four-day work week, and we’re thrilled that this is still the case after almost two years.

The majority of our team only works four days a week

One of the most common questions we get is whether we really only work four days a week, and now we have the data to say with confidence — yes, most of our team only works four days a week, or they are choosing to work five shorter days, which is an option that several parents have found more suitable for their families.

In our most recent survey, 73 percent of Buffer’s teammates only work a four-day work week (or five shorter days, which is an option). The remaining 27 percent said they work more than four days, most often people work four and a half days and use Friday to catch up on tasks. On Fridays we do not schedule meetings and no communication via email, Slack or threads is expected from our team. Some people choose to use it as an “overflow” tag, and we as an organization support that, provided it doesn’t result in overwork.

84% of our team can get all of their work done four days a week

Finally, we also wanted to know if teammates feel they can get all of their work done four days a week, and 84 percent of our team either agree or strongly agree that they’re able to do the to complete the work requested of them in four days .
This was an adjustment as it’s not easy to suddenly change the work week. As a result, all teams and teammates have been experimenting over the past few years to adjust their work, projects, deadlines, and expectations to be realistic with a four-day work week. There’s always room for improvement, but we’re pleased that number is as high as it is right now.

We’ve shared with our team that we know that changing long-standing habits and expectations of a five-day work week will take time. After all, we’ve worked our entire professional lives with a five-day workweek paradigm.

So when we see responses to our survey from people who don’t feel like they can do all the work they need to get done in five days, it causes us to question a few important things:

• Is the workload reasonable for a 4 day week?
• Are these cases constant or one-off due to deadline pressure or large projects?
• Is there feedback we can give the individual or the team to streamline or work more efficiently?

We want the four-day workweek to apply equally to everyone, and since we apply this uniquely to different teams (like our advocacy team), we are open to creative solutions and the repetition of a flexible schedule.

A four-day work week, like telecommuting in general, requires trusting teammates who are honest about their work demands and workloads. It’s a dialogue between manager and teammate and we encourage our company to continue it.

A common question about the four-day workweek is whether there are unexpected downsides or challenges.

We struggled with one thing in particular: how connected do we feel as a team when you have fewer hours in the workweek to allow for casual conversations and team-building activities.

When we started the pilot in 2020, we intentionally reduced the number of hangouts and casual events to make room for productive work during the week. We still have one or two team wide events like All Hands or Town Halls with our leadership team each quarter and these are recorded for anyone who is unable to attend.

Our engagement scores have declined since early 2021 due to many, many factors including team turnover, product alignment, and external influences. One thing that has been highlighted in our surveys is the reduction in team building events like zoom hangouts, guest speakers, and in-person events like our retreat.

For 2022 we are delving back into more conscious team building, both asynchronously, synchronously and occasionally with face-to-face meetings where available.

We still want to maintain a balance of productive work throughout our 32 hour week, but also want to have some purposeful events that are part of the larger building block of team bonding.

We’ll follow up with future blogs about things we’ve done in the past and initiatives we’re trying for 2022!

Many companies are now exploring a four-day work week, encouraging their employees to be flexible and efficient in their work weeks. We’ve been asked by many companies to even experiment with a four-day work week – and here are our best resources and steps to start a discussion or test!

• We tested it on a small scale (one month), with some key survey questions to measure success.
• We then rolled it out in a 6-month pilot, continuously surveying our team and collecting objective productivity statistics (like lines of code written, customer satisfaction numbers, etc.)
• We have clarified and refined hNow we’re tackling a four day work week with our customer support team. (We alternate days between our support staff so we still have 24/7 in our customer support inbox.)
• At the end of seven months of a four day work week, we’ve felt enough momentum and positive response to commit to another year of a four-day workweek, with additional clarifications on using the 5th day as an “overflow” and performance expectations for it as a perk.
• After almost two years, we feel more secure than ever in our new systems, although we will continue to question, investigate and test different habits in order to work efficiently and still stick together as a company. We’re still working on the ideal balance of team engagement and events amid a shorter work week.

Even after almost two years, we still have a lot to learn about working four days a week. We’ll keep sharing as we go and we’d love to hear from you! What questions do you have about the four-day week? Send us a tweet!