There was a time when workers only dreamed of a five-day work week — now, concerns over employee wellness as the world begins to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic are driving a global interest in a four-day work week.

Statistics Canada doesn’t track the number of organizations moving to reduced hours, but 2021 data shows the average full-time employee in this country still worked 39.5 hours per week. That, however, doesn’t mean employees are satisfied; a survey by ADP Canada, conducted with Maru Public Opinion, reveals many working Canadians took a chance on a new career opportunity in recent months.

The survey found 24 per cent of respondents were new to their current position, a rate of turn-over some have called The Great Resignation.

One potential solution to poor employee retention may be a shorter week. The not-for-profit community platform, 4 Day Week Global, found 63 per cent of businesses saw better employee retention after making the change, while 78 per cent of employees reported they were happier and less stressed.

The world’s largest four-day trial launched this June in the United Kingdom, with more than 3,300 employees at 70 organizations participating. Researchers from Oxford University, Cambridge University and Boston College will study the results when the pilot wraps up in December.

In Canada, many non-profits are also exploring the benefits and drawbacks of reduced working hours, here’s what they had to say:
 

David Suzuki Foundation

At the David Suzuki Foundation, a four-day work week wasn’t an end goal — it was a starting point.

Sabaa Khan, director general of the David Suzuki Foundation for Quebec and Atlantic Canada, says her workplace eschewed a five-day week since its inception in 1997. The foundation’s mission — to protect natural diversity and the well-being of all present and future life — made a shorter week a natural fit.

“The philosophy of the foundation is really about slowing down production and consumption, recognizing the inter-relationships between humanity and nature; the four-day work week is a part of this,” says Khan. “We work towards conservation, protection of the earth and you know, when it comes to the exploitation of natural resources, something that’s gone hand-in-hand with that is the exploitation of humans and workers.”

While thankful for the work of labour activists who fought hard for a five-day work week in the early years of the last century, the director general believes that model is itself now out-dated.

“The typical 40-hour work week is really antiquated when you think about lifestyles today,” Khan says. “I think that young people today are not willing to assume the same working conditions as workers in the 50s or the 60s, so we have to look at the shifts that are happening and what people value — particularly what we’re valuing post-pandemic.”

Foundation staff typically work 34 hours a week, but have a lot of flexibility within that envelope. And while most employees work Monday to Thursday, Khan says some choose to work Tuesday to Friday if that better fits their schedule.

“We have, also, a lot of different situations among employees. There are single parents and there are people who have parental obligations, taking care of elderly parents, and so having that flexibility of deciding which day you might want to take off just allows a better work-life balance.”

Khan also notes the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has, just this year, begun referencing the concept of “degrowth” as part of the solution to the climate crisis. Shorter work-weeks, with less commuting, less consuming and less production, fit with that message.

“People are stressed, workers are burnt-out, there’s just something about the way we’ve been doing things that’s just not working well for nature or for humanity,” she says. “So I think the more that we see these concepts, like degrowth, like well-being in the public space, the more natural it will become for people to seek better livelihoods and better working conditions.”

Going forward, Khan would like to see Canada try something similar to Iceland’s landmark four-day work week trial, which made headlines around the world last year and ultimately gave about 86 per cent of workers in that country the right to work reduced hours.

“I think that would be a great move for Canada to make,” she adds.
 

EcoSuperior

Sue Hamel pauses to speak to a person returning ashtrays to the fenced compound behind EcoSuperior’s small office in Thunder Bay.

“It can get really busy some days,” says Hamel, noting the Ontario-based non-profit has recycled more than two million cigarette butts since 2015. The organization runs a plethora of programs aimed at creating healthier people and a healthier planet — a mission that dove-tails with its recent move to a four-day work week.

“Humanity needs to slow down,” says the executive director. “When you slow down and you rest, which is what every species does at certain times or seasons, you make better choices and you’re a better person.”

That translates into better outcomes for humans and the environment, Hamel adds. 

But EcoSuperior’s move to the four-day week didn’t happen overnight; it took intensive research, strategic partnerships and a nearly year-long pilot project before the organization’s board of directors made the change permanent in February of 2022.

“The four-day work week can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people and should be considered very differently for different organizations. I think that’s really important. There is no one-size-fits-all solution for organizations or companies,” Hamel says.

Spurred on by the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Hamel began investigating different four-day models, reading up on past successes and reaching out to institutions that had already adopted a four-day week. EcoSuperior also partnered with Lakehead University’s Department of Psychology, which provided a comprehensive evaluation based on staff feedback before, during and after the pilot program.

“Not only were [the board of directors] hearing my verbal reports on the pilot, they were getting this other piece that was really informative and in-depth,” explains Hamel. “I highly recommend, if anyone is thinking of doing this, to reach out to their local university to see if there are researchers willing to do it, because I know a lot of not-for-profits may not have the money to hire researchers, but it’s a really hot subject right now so these researchers were really stoked to have the opportunity.”

The end result was a flexible 32-hour work week, with no reduction in salary. EcoSuperior’s office is now closed on Fridays. 

“It means you can work your 32 hours Monday to Thursday, but if you like, there’s a bit of flexibility in that. Let’s say you only want to work 7-hour days Monday to Thursday, you would just spill those extra hours onto Friday morning or whenever works for you.”

Hamel adds this model also recognises that the whole world is not working a four-day work week. Flexibility is also crucial to meeting the needs of the community.

“If a funder or a community partner, for example, needs us to do a campaign or an event or meeting on a Friday, we can’t go, ‘Oh, sorry, we don’t work on Fridays.’ We need to be flexible with that and arrange our week accordingly,” she says.

But overall, the executive director hasn’t seen any downside to the shorter work week. Staff are happier, healthier and more productive when they return to work on Monday.

“There was learning, though … we didn’t just blindly go and say, yeah, this is a great idea, we had staff team meetings and discussion about it. We wanted to set this up for success.” Hamel says. That meant streamlining workflow to meet deadlines and avoid overtime.

Instead of long, in-person update meetings, team-members now provide updates in a shared document that staff read every Wednesday morning.

Ironically, it was Hamel herself who had a tough time transitioning to the four-day model.

“I myself was, like so many people, just brainwashed with this illusion that the more hours you work, the more productive you are and it’s so not true,” she says. Now, Hamel is seeing the same benefits as her dozen or so staff members.

“Suddenly, I was a better executive director, I was a better boss, I was a better mom, I think I’m a better neighbour and a better friend. It’s just fantastic,” she says. “It’s been a real win-win-win.”
 

The Enchanté Network

It was a summer to remember — and evaluate — at The Enchanté Network. 

The national organization, which represents more than 200 entities serving 2SLGBTQI+ communities, spent July and August piloting a four-day work week. Now, the organization is looking to the future.

“All of us working at The Enchanté Network are also from the community that we serve, so the work we do intersects directly with our lived experiences,” says executive director Tyler Boyce. “I was seeing staff go above and beyond, because of the passion for the work.”

The flip-side of that passion, particularly in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, was burnout; something Boyce observed across the non-profit landscape and within his member organizations since taking the network’s helm in 2021.

“The most import thing for me is to remember that the same people that I’m fighting for with The Enchanté Network are the same people I’m working with day-in and day-out,” Boyce says. He hoped the four-day work week would allow staff to achieve a healthier work-life balance, have more energy and access greater creativity.

He wasn’t disappointed.

“We were working more strategically, rather than just working with a sense of urgency. I did not want urgency culture to be any part of The Enchanté Network,” Boyce streeses. “Seeing the big picture is so, so important and necessary for the work that we do … and I saw a real growth of systems thinking amongst my staff during the pilot.”

Employee feedback was an important component of the project; staff contributed to a running document over the two-month trial. Boyce says creating a safe space to discuss the project and its outcomes was also crucial.

As originally conceived, the network’s six employees were to work 30 hours, Monday to Thursday each week of the pilot. But incorporating flexibility into the schedule quickly emerged as a key area of development. Some participants found working half days during the week and full days on Fridays, without the distraction of office communications, allowed for the most productivity and balance.

“You cannot just try to cram all the work you do in a five-day work week into a four-day work week. That won’t work, it’s not sustainable and it’s not in-line with avoiding burnout and creating a better work-life balance or supporting employee retention,” Boyce says. “You need to leave room on your schedule for flexibility.”

Practical changes, such as meeting less frequently and planning work out in two-week increments rather than one-week at a time, also helped streamline workflow and allowed the network to focus on actions with the most impact for the 2SLGBTQI+ organizations it serves.

Now that the pilot has concluded, the network is reviewing and reflecting on the results. Boyce says the network is also in the process of growing its staff and he’d like to repeat the four-day work week pilot project once the organization is at full complement.

“It’s an evolving conversation at the The Enchanté Network,” he says. “But the conversation is definitely continuing.”
 

Impact Organizations of Nova Scotia

A four-day work week had been on Annika Voltan’s radar for a while, so when the executive director of Impact Organizations of Nova Scotia heard that another organization, Cape Breton-based New Dawn, was looking to partner on a pilot project she jumped at the opportunity.

“It wasn’t a hard sell with staff,” she says.

Now four organizations are navigating a six-month pilot project together, sharing experiences, feedback and information with each other and a researcher from Cape Breton University who will conduct regular staff surveys until the project ends on December 31.

“The survey questions capture things around productivity, but also questions about burnout, perceived burnout and psychological safety in the workplace, along with other kinds of organizational culture factors,” Voltan explains. “But we’re still very much in the middle of it.”

However, Impact Organizations of Nova Scotia has identified two areas of particular interest; building a healthier work-life balance and improved staff retention. Voltan notes non-profits are generally unable to recruit talent from either government or the private sector because of wage disparity — a four-day work week could give them a leg-up in the hiring process.

“We need to be exploring other kinds of flexible options if we want to become an employer of choice and this is one that holds a lot of potential,” she says. Currently, staff are working 30 hours Monday to Thursday.

Already, Voltan has seen less burnout and more energy in her staff. But the real test will come this fall as the slower summer season comes to an end.

“It’s really pushed us to start conversations around how we focus our work,” she says. “We don’t want to be feeling spread thin or like we can’t cram it all in, we don’t want to try to do the same amount in less time.”

She also acknowledges that frontline staff at many organizations may not be able to benefit from a shift to a four-day work week because some funding agreements stipulate working hours. “That could create an inequitable kind of environment,” says Voltan. “So it’s not perfect.”

The executive director hopes the pilot leads to a permanent adoption of a four-day week, but it’s simply too early to say with certainty. The final analysis of the project is expected in March 2023.

“We are really wanting to lean in around this piece of healing workplace culture and not only research it, but experiment from our own standpoint so we can share back and hopefully be some kind of inspiration for the broader sector.”
 

Greenpeace Canada

Farrah Khan is surrounded by passionate people, people driven to protect biodiversity, prevent pollution and promote peace. But at times, that drive to make change lead to burnout.

“We’re a purpose driven organization and I would say all of our staff feel a connection to the work that we do, they get a lot of meaning and personal satisfaction out of their jobs,” says Khan, who works as Greenpeace Canada’s deputy director. “But we don’t want to extract every ounce of energy from our staff, we want our staff to be happy, we want our staff to have lives outside of their jobs and we also believe very much that rest is important, so that you do come to work you are in the best shape to do a good job in the role that you have.”

That desire for a better work-life balance landed on the bargaining table during union negotiations in 2019 as the organization looked for ways to address what Khan calls “grind-culture.”

The end result was a collective bargaining agreement that facilitated a move to a four-day work week via a pilot project. Although no one knew it at the time, the pilot would launch just as the world came to grips with the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Initially we were planning to do Fridays off for everyone, which is still the case, but because the pandemic started when it did, we ended up allowing for more flexibility,” Khan says. “We have a lot of staff who are parents with young kids and that was a difficult situation to manage, especially in the early months of the pandemic, with so many closures happening.”

Staff were surveyed throughout the nine-month pilot and a small team met regularly to discuss and tweak the program. But the final result was unanimous; every single staff member voted to keep the shorter week.

Now, the organization’s 80 or so staff members work a 28-hour week.

“The non-profit sector doesn’t always pay staff as much as they wish they could, so our four-day week is not a compressed week, it’s a reduced week,” she explains. “We cut everybody’s hours, but we didn’t cut anybody’s pay.”

That’s not to say there hasn’t been a learning curve. While the organization closes its office on Friday, some staff do end up putting hours in — and conversations around workload and workflow are ongoing.

“I think that we are still struggling a little bit with ensuring that everyone is able to stick to the four days in terms of the work reduction side of things,” says Khan. “But I would say on the whole, the culture definitely has shifted and shifted pretty quickly.”

The benefits of the shorter week were felt almost immediately, she adds. Staff were better rested, more focused and ultimately happier.

“I’d say the approach we took with the pilot project was a really good one. Testing it out is a good way to see how it will work for you, in your own organization and own context, every workplace is different so there may be tweeks that need to be made depending on the nature of the work.”

As an anti-capitalist initiative challenging the status quo, the four-day work week also fits with Greenpeace Canada’s core aims, the deputy director says.

“The nature of our work has changed over time and the nature of how we see time has also changed, so I think that reflecting on that has been interesting; why is the weekend only two days? Why can’t it be three? And we were really happy we were able to come to a consensus on how to approach that,” Khan says. “We have no regrets.”

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