LANSING, Mich. — 80% of the hours for 100% of the pay. It's a concept that many companies have said they're exploring lately. But does it work? Lindsey boetsch looks at the results after one company put it to the test.
I started to read about it back in 2019. A four day work week — sounds dreamy? It’s an idea that Uncharted CEO Bank Benitez brought to his executive team late last year, and then COVID happened.
Do we need to be working like crazy hours right now? Or, do we need to really think about how we care for the mental health of our team and give people some space. So this summer, they launched an experiment hiring a third party company to evaluate the efficacy of the experiment. They looked at three main things performance, culture, and mental health.
Performance stayed the same and was constant over the course of the experiment compared to previous performance. Culture, he says, slightly improved at the Denver-based company. People felt just as, or a little more connected to members on their team. And no surprise — mental health increased.
I know that our best work comes when our team is healthy, when our team is mentally healthy, when our team is aligned and in touch with each other. Benitez says there’s a different mentality that his employees bring in when they have a four day work week. They’re more focused and clear about priorities.
But there are some downfalls there’s a little bit less buffer time to kind of just go with the wind. You have to be really thoughtful about how you structure your time. And of course, the benefit of that is, Fridays are off.
Which leads to more downtime and time to refresh before starting the work grind again Monday morning. How do we situate Uncharted within the broader life that they’re living.
Whatever that’s family, kids, adventures, travel, all that stuff. And if we can do that, i think the team will come back and perform better.
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