The four-day workweek gives many benefits to employers and workers, however decreasing the work schedule with out decreasing productiveness would require organizations to undertake new instruments, processes and options.

In accordance with a latest pilot performed by 4 Day Workweek World, the condensed schedule resulted in much less burnout, greater job satisfaction and higher psychological and bodily well being. It is also confirmed to supply important recruiting benefits. Many of the pilot’s 30 taking part corporations have since made the change everlasting.

Nevertheless, many who fail to adequately put together their groups earlier than making the change face important challenges. However there are methods to chop down on work time with out reducing down on productiveness. In truth, a 2022 research discovered that data staff solely spend a 3rd of their time focussed on expert work and 9% devoted in the direction of main strategic objectives.

Switching to a four-day workweek whereas sustaining — and even growing — productiveness, due to this fact, requires first addressing probably the most important time wasters. Fortuitously, a variety of instruments and processes can allow workers to chop a full day’s price of waste out of their weekly schedules.

Associated: You have Been Monitoring Worker Productiveness All Fallacious

1. Deal with outcomes, not effort

A lot of our work tradition equates “busyness” with “effectiveness,” however encouraging a tradition that prizes “busyness” can scale back total productiveness. Reasonably than give attention to how a lot time workers devoted to a job, organizations ought to as a substitute work with employees to set benchmarks associated to particular outcomes on a sensible timeline and a mutually agreed upon measure of success.

That would embrace contributing their piece of a bigger undertaking earlier than a sure deadline, drafting a finances in time for the subsequent board assembly, or touchdown a sure variety of gross sales per week. Regardless of the job, it is important to give attention to what’s achieved, not what number of hours it took.

2. Get extra out of fewer (and shorter) conferences

Analysis has discovered that distant work has led to extra and longer conferences, a pattern that organizations might want to reverse to chop down on wasted time. Listed below are a number of methods to scale back assembly time whereas retaining everybody within the loop.

1. All the time put together and share an agenda upfront
2. Restrict conferences to half-hour or much less
3. Begin conferences at odd instances — reminiscent of 12:03 — and stick with these begin and finish instances to strengthen a tradition that values each minute
4. Set the tone, context and expectations earlier than the assembly begins, and share important factors after it ends, utilizing asynchronous communication instruments like e mail, Slack and Bubbles.
5. When obligatory, proceed conversations over async alternate options to keep away from extending conferences.

Associated: Obtained Too Many Conferences? Here is The way to Lower Again

3. Use tech instruments to measure and optimize work hours

Discovering extra hours within the day is simply doable when these hours are tracked and measured. That is why it is essential for organizations to undertake undertaking, time and job administration instruments earlier than adopting a four-day workweek. Mixed, these instruments can assist leaders benchmark time-saving actions and measure their progress in the direction of shared objectives, reminiscent of reducing down on assembly instances and frequency by 20% throughout the board.

Associated: 78% of Employers Are Utilizing Distant Work Instruments to Spy on You. Here is a Extra Efficient (and Moral) Method to Monitoring Worker Productiveness.

4. Scale back distractions with async instruments

When employees is participating of their best “deep work,” the very last thing you need is for them to be distracted by the dings and buzzes of countless notifications. In truth, analysis has proven that even small interrupts can result in anxiousness and frustration and that it could take greater than 20 minutes to get again on observe.

That’s the reason organizations trying to get extra productiveness out of much less work time have to be vigilant of their effort to scale back pointless distractions in any respect prices. One of the crucial efficient methods to take action is by relying much less on real-time communications and as a substitute adopting extra asynchronous methods. Instruments designed to facilitate asynchronous communications, like Bubbles, enable staff members to collaborate successfully with out requiring them to be “always-on” and with out pulling them out of their deep work with countless notifications.

Associated: What If Your Productiveness Instruments Are Making You Much less Productive?

5. Encourage a tradition of productiveness and time administration

To optimize their employees member’s time, organizational leaders must acknowledge that probably the most disrupting distractions come from the highest. Whereas we’d simply brush off a notification from a colleague, most will pull themselves away from the duty at hand to reply to a message from management. Due to this fact, the methods outlined above are solely as efficient because the management’s willingness to undertake them.

A few of the methods leaders can “stroll the stroll” embrace:

1. Undertake asynchronous work types
2. Keep away from treating each job as pressing, and prioritize appropriately
3. Keep away from sending textual content, slack and e mail messages to colleagues which may distract them from deep work

The four-day workweek gives many benefits to employers and workers, however these advantages can solely be achieved when staff are empowered to chop down on wasted time. Fortuitously, there’s quite a lot of room for enchancment and quite a lot of new options designed to assist workers preserve and even enhance productiveness whereas decreasing total work hours.