Redefining Productivity in the Modern Workplace
For a lot of leaders, the idea that your organization working less could be an effective strategy to boost productivity seems counter intuitive at best, and fantastical at worst.
I get it. But having worked with hundreds of organizations all over the world to implement shorter work weeks, I would like to share with you why this can indeed be the case, if designed and positioned in the right way.
Let’s start by establishing what exactly we mean by productivity.
The traditional measure of productivity, time/output, is grossly outdated and completely insufficient at capturing employee value and organizational performance.
We have a crisis of ‘performative busyness’ in the modern workplace, that prizes visibility and activity over quality and results. According to Atlassian’s 2024 State of Teams report, 65% of knowledge workers say it is more important to quickly respond to messages than it is to make progress on top priorities.
It is no longer enough to focus on ‘output’, or the quantity of tasks/activities and volume of production, when it’s outcomes that really matter. It is no longer enough to focus on efficiency at the expense of effectiveness.
The relationship between hours worked and true productivity is even more distant, and this gap will continue to widen in the future as AI automates more output-driven tasks, leaving humans to focus on driving outcomes.
Boosting Productivity and Employee Engagement
In this world, success will not derive from squeezing every last hour of work and every last drop of efficiency out of your people.
Productivity in today’s knowledge-based, digitalized economy is a much more complex, multi-faceted beast. It requires us to leverage our most human traits to be able to think up creative ideas, solve complex problems and make smart decisions.
Sustainable performance relies on healthy, rested brains and effective recovery. The shorter work week leverages human psychology to boost energy, brainpower, and motivation.
80% of business transformation projects fail.
And one major reason why productivity improvement initiatives fall short is they lack one critical ingredient – enthusiastic employee buy-in and engagement.
Because behavior change is hard without a powerful motivator.
And in many ways, organizations often actively disincentivize employees by engaging in what is known as ‘performance punishment’, loading more tasks onto the plate of employees when they find ways to do their work more efficiently.
A shorter work week is a cheat code for employee engagement and innovation because it flips that incentive structure on its head, by giving employees a genuine, direct, and tangible stake in the successful realization of productivity gains.
This creates the intrinsic motivation and collective incentive necessary to fuel the adoption of smart work habits, better ways of working and new technologies.
The Impact of a 4-Day Work Week
An 18-month 4-day work week pilot involving 80 employees at global consumer goods giant Unilever in New Zealand between 2020 and 2022 delivered incredible results, with the business achieving 6 quarters of revenue growth, 100% client satisfaction, and hitting every one of its business targets, leading to the program being extended to 600 Unilever Australia employees in 2022.
Describing the philosophy that underpinned the pilot, Managing Director of Unilever NZ Cameron Heath said:
“Most businesses go through a two-year cycle, come up with a productivity exercise, ask everyone to do a little bit more — to absorb additional workload and responsibility — and get nothing in return for it. For me, the biggest differentiator in this approach is that there’s truly a shared reward that is truly of value and meaning to the people that are giving the additional effort, the additional passion, and energy into the business, and that shared reward is time.”
When people talk about a shorter work week as being a win-win for employers and employees, this is what they mean. Successful productivity initiatives in today’s world of work need to have organization-wide alignment on a mutually beneficial outcome to get the kind of buy-in that is necessary for transformational change.
Fortunately, the biggest impediment to productivity in the modern-day enterprise also happens to the biggest factor leading to long hours and an inability to detach from work – a failure to effectively tackle the rise of ‘busy work’.
According to Asana’s 2024 State of Work Innovation Report, 53% of workers’ time is spent on ‘work about work’, such as communicating about work, searching for information, and chasing the status of tasks. That leaves less than half (47%) of their time for the skilled, strategic work they were hired to do.
That is why most of our shorter work week transformation programs focus on tackling this ‘sludge work’, such as meeting overload and excessive collaboration, distractions and interruptions in the workday, outdated processes, ineffective decision-making and duplication of effort, redundant work and misaligned priorities, and poor use of digital technologies.
Addressing Burnout with a Shorter Work Week
A shorter work week can also spur a virtuous circle of continuous improvement because employee wellbeing has a symbiotic relationship with productivity (much more so than hours worked and productivity). They are complementary forces, not competing forces.
Quality rest and recovery is biologically necessary for better brain function, leading to improved productivity, creativity, and decision-making. Studies also show that employees tend to sleep better when they work less, due to increased leisure time and detachment from work.
Against this backdrop, we are currently experiencing a global employee burnout epidemic. A 2024 survey of 12,000 professionals by Mercer found that 82% of the workforce is at high risk of burnout due to excessive workload and exhaustion.
According to The State of Workplace Burnout 2024 global study, 42% of employees who are currently working a standard 40-hour work week are currently experiencing burnout.
Many of our current clients at Work Time Reduction also participated in this study. The burnout rate among employees working a 32-hour work week was 9% – a full 33% less.
This can be attributed to two factors – the additional rest, recovery and psychological detachment from work afforded to these employees, as well as the significant work redesign efforts that these organizations engaged in with our support, to tackle systemic, structural issues that were holding back their people’s performance and wearing down their wellbeing.
The WHO defines burnout as being the confluence of three dimensions – fatigue and exhaustion, cynicism towards your work, and low confidence in your ability to perform.
That is why we need to start talking about burnout not only as an individual wellness problem, but a significant corporate productivity problem.
Is there a single more impactful thing that a leader can do to boost organizational productivity than to unlock on-third of their workforce from fatigue, cynicism, and inefficacy?
Redefining Productivity: The Imperative of a Balanced Workload
If your approach to productivity is to seek to intensify efficiency instead of redesigning work to increase capacity and create space for focus, you will instead end up negatively impacting both recovery and motivation, creating a vicious circle of burnout, turnover, and depleted productivity.
Healthy, sustainable, and balanced workloads is not an employee perk. In today’s world of work, it is an organizational imperative. If your focus on a leader is on better work rather than more work, then you should be considering a shorter work week.
About The Author
Joe O’Connor is a recognized leader in the field of work time reduction and employee wellbeing. He currently serves as the CEO of Work Time Reduction Center of Excellence, where he spearheads initiatives to promote shorter workweeks and enhance productivity through innovative work practices. Joe has been instrumental in leading successful pilot programs and research projects that demonstrate the benefits of reduced work hours on both employee wellbeing and organizational performance.
Previously, Joe was the Director and Campaign Lead for 4 Day Week Global, where he played a pivotal role in advocating for and implementing four-day workweek trials across various organizations worldwide. His work has been featured in numerous media outlets, and he is a sought-after speaker on topics related to work time reduction, productivity, and employee engagement.