The CEO of a Toronto tech company says a test in four-day work weeks has been a huge success, and the experiment even led to an “unanticipated” result.
Ross Wainwright, CEO of Alida, said the software company implemented four-day work weeks for its 500 employees at the beginning of June, and the two-month trial ends this week.
Company officials said the decision for the shortened work week came from employee feedback and was prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The early results are great,” Wainwright told CP24 on Wednesday. “Employees are clearly happier and more balanced.”
Wainwright said the company did not cut wages to achieve the four-day work week, where everyone has Fridays off.
“It’s about striking a better balance for our employees and helping to invest in their mental health,” he said
Wainwright said the most “unexpected” result of the trial was the ability his employees told him they felt knowing the company trusted them to get the job done on reduced hours.
“We empowered the employees to do the work within their schedule,” he said. “It’s the power of trust that really motivated employees. . . . The day you should trust your employees is the day you hire them, and that trust has gone a long way.”
Wainwright said the company will take the next six weeks to review the results of the trial and expects four-day work weeks to become a permanent part of the company’s benefits package.
He said the trial is also having a “huge impact” on employee retention at a time when companies are struggling with labor shortages.
“I certainly urge companies to experiment,” he said. “We looked at eight Fridays. It wasn’t a huge commitment. … It was the right thing to do.”
Meanwhile, the world’s biggest four-day working week experiment is nearing the halfway point in the UK. Organizers say there have been significant improvements in people’s well-being.
The trial, which is being conducted through partnerships between 4 Day Week Global and researchers from Cambridge, Boston College and the University of Oxford, includes approximately 3,300 workers from 70 different companies.
Participating companies, while only working 80 percent of their regular hours, see no change in compensation or productivity.
“Anecdotally, companies suggest that there has been an overwhelmingly positive experience with revenue and productivity levels, [that have] maintaining or in some cases improving,” Charlotte Lockhart, managing director and founder of 4 Day Week Global, a non-profit organization working to support the adoption of a four-day work week since 2018. he told BNN Bloomberg in a video interview earlier this month.
The trial began in June and will last until November.
With files from BNN Bloomberg’s Daniel Johnson.