The data are in: Uncharted is moving to a 4-day workweek
This article was co-authored by Uncharted CEO Banks Benitez and Coeffect Principal Consultant Paul Collier.
At the beginning of the summer, we launched an experiment to try out a 4-day workweek. Everyone’s salary stayed the same, but our team worked 32 hours every week between June 1st and August 28th, taking every Friday off (This was not four 10-hour days. This was four eight-hour days.).
The experiment tested the hypothesis that we can deliver 100% of the work at 80% of the time, while increasing team mental health, reducing team stress, and maintaining team culture and cohesion.
Based on the quantitative and qualitative results from our third-party evaluator and extensive conversations with our team and partners, we are making the 4-day workweek Uncharted company policy.
This is the fourth post in our series on the 4-day workweek. Here, we’ll share the data that led to the decision. In the fifth and final post, we’ll outline how we trained our team, reinforced new rhythms around our calendar, established increased scrutiny for meetings, and prioritized the essential work.
Our Third-party Evaluation Partner
We hired Coeffect, a third-party evaluation partner, to evaluate the experiment. They designed an evaluation process that assesses team performance, hours worked, cultural impacts, self-reported mental health, personal life attributes, and stress levels (you can see the survey here).
In May, Coeffect captured baseline data by sharing a survey based on other research into the 4-day workweek. Coeffect also captured data in June to see if Uncharted team members were actually taking Friday’s off (they were) and asked them to complete a final survey a few weeks ago. The surveys focused on individuals’ experiences, so Coeffect held a focus group with our managers to understand how the change impacted cross-team dynamics.
Finally, Coeffect analyzed all of these qualitative and quantitative data to examine each learning priority in detail:
- Is it possible for us to maintain the quantity and quality of the team’s work output while reducing working hours?
- How does switching to a 4 workweek change our workplace dynamics?
- How does switching to a 4-day workweek affect team members’ lives outside of work?
- Should Uncharted make a 4-day workweek organization policy?
Coeffect and Uncharted worked together to design a study that was robust enough for us to make a well-informed decision for our specific context. That said, there are some important limitations to our approach. We have a small team, have been undergoing other organization changes, and are operating in one of the most tumultuous years in recent memory. While we’re confident in our decision based on the team’s input and the results below, we acknowledge that there were other factors at play in addition to our shift to the 4-day workweek.
The Data and Results
The team worked fewer hours
The team’s median number of hours worked dropped by 23% from a median of 45 hours worked before the 4-day workweek to 34.5 hours.
We aimed to work 32-hour workweeks, and we were slightly higher than that at a median of 34.5 hours per week. As we continue to unlearn old habits around meetings and as we get better at structuring our priorities and our calendars, I imagine this number will fall.
Workplace Performance
Performance and goal-setting remained steady
Directors evaluation of their team’s performance: All of our Directors (who manage teams) reported no drop in the performance against OKRs of their teams and direct reports (compared to pre-experiment levels). Each Director worked with their respective direct reports to set OKRs over the summer, and they managed those OKRs and evaluated their performance.
Perceptions of Performance: Perceptions of self-performance and other’s performance increased over the experiment in a statistically significant way. Learn more about these questions here.
Goals and Autonomy: We saw no significant increase or decrease in team responses to the following questions:
- “My goals push me out of my comfort zone and force me to improve.”
- “My manager gives me the right amount of autonomy to complete my work.”
Client and Partner Perceptions
- Two major Uncharted funding partners were both unphased by our transition to a 4-day workweek. They reported no concerns or perceivable drop in Uncharted’s performance or responsiveness.
- Another major Uncharted funding partner loved the concept so much they wanted Uncharted to share results with their team.
- In conversations with a prospective funding partner, they expressed hesitation about partnering with Uncharted given the 4-day workweek experiment. This concern was raised in the course of considering a funding relationship with Uncharted, and we communicated our commitment to the same standard of 100% quantity and quality of output at 80% hours. Ultimately, our responses and credibility were enough for them to overcome their concerns and commit to funding us.
Workplace Dynamics
Support from co-workers increased
We hypothesized that a person’s sense of support from their coworkers might drop slightly because everyone was so focused on their priorities, but we saw the opposite. Learn more about the data here.
Work-life balance increased and work stress decreased
We asked four questions related to stress and work-life balance. We saw a positive change in this area over the experiment, but this change wasn’t statistically significant. Learn more about the questions here.
Workplace culture did not suffer
One of the concerns about our 4-day workweek experiment was that our culture would suffer. In the focus and discipline to get our work done, would our culture stay strong? The data showed that the teammates’ sense of culture remained unchanged compared to baseline data before the experiment. Learn more about our culture questions here.
Comments
Team members reported that while workweeks felt intense, having an extra day off resulted in greater energy at the start of the workweek. In addition, because team members have more time to spend with friends, family, and their own interests, some have reported that they feel the team is doing better at bringing their whole selves into the workplace.
“I think the four-day workweek has improved our culture. I feel more rested, focused, and connected to my coworkers.”
While team members report that there is less spontaneity during the workdays, most attribute the challenges of working remotely.
“I personally don’t think that it has been the workweek change that has affected the culture… Not seeing people in person has really affected the team dynamic in my opinion.”
Non-work Life
Satisfaction with life outside of work increased
We asked our team the following questions and compiled them into the results below.
- How satisfied are you with your physical health right now?
- How satisfied are you with your mental and emotional health right now?
- How satisfied are you with your leisure time?
- How satisfied are you with your involvement in your community?
In open-ended survey responses, several team members shared that the four-day workweek was crucial in coping with other challenges they have experienced in 2020 related to COVID-19, quarantines, etc. For example, one team member shared:
“Fridays off to focus on my mental health and cope with the anxiety of the state of our world have been a godsend!”
How are people spending their Fridays?
- One person has signed up to be a Court-Appointed-Special Advocate for children in the justice system.
- One person on our team is an executive coach and is taking on coaching clients while spending time in her daughter’s virtual kindergarten classroom.
- Two people are learning new languages.
- Two people are spending time with their elderly grandparents.
- One person is spending more time baking bread and catching up on house chores.
- One person is volunteering with an organization to create career pathways for students with disabilities.
- One person is taking cooking classes.
- One person is using every Friday to get ready for her child to be born.
- One person is doing pro-bono coaching for a women’s professional network.
- One person is spending time with her two young daughters, and she has taken up painting.
- One person has spent almost every Friday hiking in the Colorado mountains.
- One person has been playing pick-up basketball and getting into sci-fi fiction.
Other factors
Remote Work: There was some feedback from our team suggesting that working remotely may have made the 4-day workweek easier to manage, given fewer distractions at home than at the office. We have begun discussing practices and routines for the 4-day workweek if and when we return to our office.
Life in 2020: This year is unique in so many ways, and non-work stresses and pressures (from taking care of homebound kids to dealing with family members’ layoffs to simply watching the news) were factors that we were unable to isolate in this experiment.
Team Reorg: We went through an internal reorg right before the 4-day workweek experiment (we moved from a two-team internal structure to a three-team structure), and we are still adapting to our new org-structure. Some people reported that work-related stress was more related to getting used to this new structure than to the 4-day workweek itself.
“I think the 4-day workweek was the best thing for team morale. The pandemic and restructuring brought on a lot of stress and the 4-day workweek was one way to create more space for breathing. ”
“The remote work environment and internal reorganization had had a bigger influence on all of these things than the four-day workweek”
“The larger stressors are around the reorg and working remote, and even around the fact that there has been some culture deterioration or just a lack of silliness or connection, things like that. That has way more to do with us being remote than us trying to get our work done in four days. It’s awkward and hard to find those moments over the computer.”
82% of people suggested that keep the policy
Comments
“I’ve seen a movement from operating from my inbox or operating from the perspective of busywork or working down a checklist to actually prioritizing the work that’s most important, which makes me feel a lot more energized and engaged.”
“I think it has taught me how to better prioritize goals and objectives — I have also been better about keeping myself accountable and productive.”
“It really did force me to be much more regimented with my scheduling, which was not easy at the beginning but I’ve grown accustomed to this and now I really appreciate it.”
“I am so much happier in my personal life and feel like I have time to pursue interests and relationships more than I have had in my career.”
Downsides
Coeffect’s data, focus groups, and conversations with the team report the following downsides. The negative consequences reported by team members seem to be influenced by other organization changes (e.g., team restructuring, remote work) in addition to the four-day workweek. These challenges included: High working intensity, a sense that every hour in a day must serve a purpose, little slack time or buffer in the week, and challenges with finding time for silliness and “the magic of moments.” In general, team members felt comfortable accepting and working to further address these challenges to maintain a four-day workweek.
A Note from Coeffect
First off, I applaud the Uncharted team for using the opportunity 2020 has given us to revisit norms around how we work and to have the courage to make an important organizational decision based on data.
It was remarkable how positive these results are, and there is an important lesson here: This outcome Uncharted found would only have been possible with a different way of working. As Banks has shared, the team learned about the principles of Essentialism, created a better structure for cross-team communication, established clear goals using OKRs, and experienced fewer distractions by working remotely.
Simply switching the workweek without any other training or structural changes may not have enabled the results we saw in this study. And on the other hand, forcing “essentialism,” OKRs, or any other framework for organization performance may not have been as powerful without providing the team a meaningful incentive to adopt these new practices. In other words, this policy change answered the question, ‘what do I get for working more effectively?’
Given these results, I hope the Uncharted team will continue to share team practices that have helped them succeed in the four-day workweek, such as guidelines for meetings, how to set effective objectives and key results, how to say ‘no’, and how to schedule time for the most important priorities. Our workplaces must contribute positively to their employees’ mental health and well-being, and doing these little things well helps make that a reality.
Other articles in this series
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