Boise employer saw how well workers performed at home. Then it tried a 4-day week
A Boise nonprofit that spent seven months experimenting with a four-day workweek found it worked so well it made the move permanent this month.
Healthwise, which provides educational materials to medical patients through hospitals and individual practices, found its 250 employees were more productive and were better able to manage a work-life balance when they figured out how to squeeze what used to be five days’ work into four.
That happened even as employees were mostly working from home because of the coronavirus pandemic.
“During a typical work day in an office, there’s a lot of inefficiencies that happen,” Healthwise CEO Dr. Adam Husney, a physician, said in a Zoom interview. “We have not asked them to commit to extra hours during the week. We’ve asked them to get the work that we need done. That hasn’t changed.”
Husney said his employees have found ways to maximize working hours, reduce inefficiencies and noise, and use meeting times better. Employees, most of whom are salaried and not hourly, have been working a four-day week since August. Consistent with the company’s previous practice, workers who generally had worked Monday through Friday weren’t told to work a certain number of hours. They just had to get their work completed.
“The feedback we’ve gotten is very positive,” Husney said. “Ninety-five percent of our employees felt that the four-day workweek positively impacted their work-life balance. Eighty percent said that the four-day workweek made them more likely to recommend Healthwise as an employer to their family and friends.”
Like many other companies, Healthwise sent its workers home from its offices on Bogus Basin Road during the early weeks of the pandemic in March 2020. But later, as the lines between home and work became blurred, company executives saw that workers were becoming burned out.
Healthwise has had a good record of retaining employees for a long time, but the company saw a higher percentage of people leave during the pandemic, Husney said. Rather than bring workers back to the office, Husney tried a different approach.
“And so we decided it was a good time to try the four-day week,” he said. “We’ve seen very little attrition since that time. Healthwise has always been a place that has cared a lot about its workers, and we’re proud of that.”
The company heard about studies being conducted in New Zealand looking at a four-day workweek. The findings were “pretty compelling,” Husney said, leading the company to try it out.
“It would have been really hard for us to do this if we did not have the experience of knowing that we could be productive when people were not sitting right next to us,” Husney said. “The pandemic taught us that our employees work really hard no matter where they are and they get the job done.”
American employees once worked 70 hours and 6 days a week
In the 1800s, many U.S. employees worked 70 hours or more, according to the Economic History Association. Before the Civil War, most Americans worked in agriculture, mostly for themselves. Work hours were rarely recorded, the association said.
Workers involved in manufacturing, where hours were recorded, worked an estimated 69.1 hours per week in 1830. By 1890, that had fallen to 60 hours, according to studies at the time by the U.S. Department of Interior and the U.S. Senate.
By 1919, after the end of World War I, the eight-hour workday and six days of work had become standard. In May 1926, the Ford Motor Co. introduced a five-day, 40-hour week in its automobile factories. That later became the standard across the United States, bolstered by the 1938 passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act. The law created a minimum wage and mandated overtime pay of time and a half for more than 40 hours worked in a week.
While labor unions began calling for four-day workweeks beginning in the 1950s, very little progress has been made. A March 2020 Gallup survey of 10,000 U.S. workers found that 5% worked a shortened week.
A survey of 4,000 American workers of all age groups last fall found that 83% would prefer a four-day workweek, according to GoodHire, which screens job applicants for employers.
Some lawmakers in Hawaii have called for creation of a task force to see if a four-day workweek for state government workers would be beneficial. And a California congressman has taken it a step further, introducing legislation that would create a 32-hour workweek.
In some other countries, the workweek has been getting shorter. Since 2000, workers in France have worked a 35-hour week, four days of eight hours each and one day of three hours. Overtime is paid for anything over 35 hours. In January, the United Arab Emirates government implemented a 4½-day workweek.
Healthwise looked at New Zealand experience
Traditionally, companies with four-day workweeks still have their employees work 40 hours, just completed in four days rather than five. The latest trend is to have employees work 32 hours over four days for the same pay as 40.
Kickstarter, the crowdfunding platform, began a pilot program this week with its 90 employees working 32 hours.
Microsoft in Japan conducted a four-day pilot program that saw productivity increase nearly 40%, while electricity costs fell 23%, the company reported. Unilever, the owner of brands such as Dove soap, Axe deodorant and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, completed a yearlong trial for 81 workers. And the government of Spain is in the middle of a three-year pilot where 200 companies were offered subsidies to participate. All three of these programs paid employees their full salaries for working fewer hours.
In New Zealand, estate planners Perpetual Guardian instituted a trial four-day workweek with its 240 employees before the pandemic. The company instituted an 80-100-100 rule: employees worked 80% of their former hours to accomplish 100% of the work for 100% of their pay. Productivity increased and workers were happy, the company reported.
Maintenance crews, general equipment operators and traffic operations employees for the Ada County Highway District work from 7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday or Tuesday through Friday.
The crews have to prepare each morning before heading out, so the longer days allow them spend more time in the field,” spokesperson Rachel Bjornstad said by email.
Perpetual Guardian founder Andrew Barnes and his partner, Charlotte Lockhart, created a nonprofit foundation, 4 Day Week Global, to research outcomes and encourage other companies worldwide to give it a try.
At Healthwise, Leanne Downs, a project manager who lives in West Boise, said the four-day week has worked out well.
“I very much enjoy a little faster-paced week,” Downs said by phone. “The extra day off on Fridays lets me take care of personal things in the community at businesses that aren’t open on the weekends.”
Eventually, Downs, who has worked for Healthwise for 10 years, would like to return to the office at least a couple of days a week and continue to work from home the rest of the time. She was photographed at the office for this story, along with other employees interviewed.
Tom Williams, a business manager who works with Healthwise clients, said the company has always emphasized getting tasks accomplished more than working a specified number of hours.
Sometimes, Williams said, he works a few hours on Friday to get work finished.
“And then I take the afternoon off,” said Williams, who served on an employee committee that provided feedback to management about the four-day weeks. “But there have been several days where I took the whole day off.”
One of the outcomes, Williams said, is that employees work harder to ensure they have Fridays off. He said he once crammed nine meetings into a Thursday to take the next day off.
“That was a pretty hectic day,” he said. “But, to me, the tradeoff was worth it. I’d rather work harder over the four days to get Friday off.”
Connie Feiler, a registered nurse who serves as Healthwise’s clinical director of patient experience, said she previously spent 30 years working in a hospital. Even on her days off she was expected to check company emails. Feiler, who has worked for Healthwise for about a year from her home in Pittsburgh, said she’s enjoyed having an extra day off.
“When you know you’re working Monday through Thursday, there’s a higher energy level,” she said by phone. “You’re very focused and maybe even a little more organized and just want to make sure you make the most of those four days.”
Before the pandemic, 90% of Healthwise’s employees resided in the Boise area, Husney said. After people began working from home, the company began recruiting more employees nationally.
“The four-day workweek has helped attract them and has allowed us to recruit from a more diverse population,” he said. “So that’s allowed Healthwise to improve with respect to diversity, both geographically and culturally.”
