Life at a company with a four-day workweek: ‘Mondays don’t wear me out anymore’

Hack a Boss is technological training company with flexible schedules and a four-day workweek. They have one office in La Coruña, in northwestern Spain, and will soon open another in the capital, Madrid, though the majority of staff do hybrid or remote work. Four employees — Lola, Elena, Randy and Doa — participated in this article, sharing their experience with their unusual workday model. Each one tells a personal story that doesn’t precisely reflect that of all 60 of the organization’s workers, nor the thinking of all their peers’ thoughts from Monday to Friday. Still, the four agree on two things: they’re no longer loathe to begin the week on Monday, and stress doesn’t disappear just because you work one less day.

Various governments have experimented with the four-day workweek to determine its viability. Between 2015 and 2019, Iceland reduced the workweek from 40 to 35 hours without lowering salaries for more than 2,5000 workers, and saw positive results in the areas of workforce productivity and well-being. Microsoft Japan reported a 40% increase in productivity when the company adopted the model. In 2022, a United Kingdom study of 73 firms and 3,300 employees found that nearly half saw improvements in performance, with 86% of the companies planning to keep the new schedule. The Daily Telegraph revealed in August that the British Labor Party is considering an initiative to allow employees to request a compressed four-day workweek, though it would remain 40 hours in total, in offices where circumstances allow for such a change.

The initiative has ample support in Spain too, according to a poll that was carried out in January by the 40dB Institute for EL PAÍS and Cadena SER. Two out of three respondents had a favorable opinion of the implementation of the four-day workweek, with the proposal finding particular support among young people. Last year, the Spanish government announced the availability of grants aimed at small and medium-sized industrial companies interested in reducing working hours without affecting their employees’ salaries. The project has a total budget of $10.6 million and its goal is to encourage greater productivity and improve work-life balance. However, only $3.13 million was used of available funds (29% of the money assigned to the initiative), with just 41 participating companies.

Hack a Boss is not part of this governmental project. According to Lola Cuquejo, head of the firm’s human resources department, the company adopted the four-day model “because they believe in it.” Similarly, they increased schedule flexibility due to “trust in the worker’s sense of responsibility” and the advantage of them having more time available to serve customers all over the world. So far, from a productivity standpoint, the decision has been beneficial: the first year they implemented the four-day workweek saw the biggest growth in the company’s history.

On Mondays, teams meet to collectively determine their goals for the next four days. “Goals are defined based on previous experiences, but challenge people to go a bit further,” explains Cuquejo. Each worker spaces out their tasks throughout the week according to their own preferences. “If you don’t finish on Thursday, you have to work Friday or even during the weekend. But that almost never happens because we set the goals ourselves and they are designed to be accomplished in four days. In fact, nearly everyone takes Friday off,” she adds.

Spain has a problem when it comes to satisfaction in the workplace: 54% of workers say they feel unmotivated, according to the Hays España Labor Market Guide 2022. But something that stands out when speaking with the four employees is their strong commitment to their work, and to their co-workers. Although the small sample can’t represent the reality of all the company’s employees, nor of other firms with the same model, they insist that working for a company that trusts its workers to do the same job in less time creates a sense of responsibility and gratitude.

Elena Hernández, who specializes in the selection of IT profiles, comes from a company with a very different approach. “It was a very corporate firm, where you had to sign out for even a five-minute break. I spent the day swiping my card,” she recalls. When she decided to change jobs, she knew she wanted to look for a company whose culture was better aligned with her own values. What most attracted her to the Galician tech company was the freedom it provided to its workers to manage their time without constant supervision. “They value me for the work I do, not just because I’m sitting at a desk,” she says. “It’s not that I’ve become a better worker, I’m just happier as I work. I’ve learned to do things in another way, and that has enriched me, because I feel like an adult when I’m working.”

At the beginning of this article, we mentioned that our interviewees agree that a four-day work week doesn’t necessarily reduce stress. For Cuquejo, “the capacity to generate stress is internal, it doesn’t just depend on the company, but rather, how each person manages their emotions and tasks.” Hernández adds that this modality also requires greater responsibility when it comes to personal organization. “Ultimately, it’s not just your job, it’s also those of your co-workers; here, you have to get motivated and work.”

For Randy Ponte, a community leader at Hack a Boss, one of the biggest incentives of joining the company was its goal-based system. Though a lot is required, he says he’s living a more tranquil life and feels more driven. “More freedom creates commitment,” he says. Ponte particularly values his flexible schedule, which allows him to carry out administrative tasks and fulfill obligations without having to always ask for explicit permission. “The days I have dance class, I simply come to work early,” he says. On his Fridays off — which happen nearly every week, except when there are team building activities — he takes advantage of the time to do outdoor activities like walking, bike riding or going to the countryside. He’s received other job offers, but he says he doesn’t even consider them since “many are in the traditional model.”

The four-day workweek has also seen its detractors and failed experiments. The Australian firm Yarno implemented the model, but after two years, decided to go back to the traditional setup, according to its website. Although they initially observed benefits like improved motivation and personal work-life balance, certain serious problems arose. Among them, the difficulty of keeping teams consistent, as some employees continued working Fridays while others did not, which generated resentment and communication problems. In addition, pressure to be available outside of office hours caused frustration and eventually impacted the work environment.

A popular argument against the four-day workweek is that, in sectors like customer service and manufacturing, production is directly linked to the number of hours worked, which suggests that reducing shifts can negatively affect performance. Also, productivity in Spain is relatively lower in comparison with other European countries. According to recent data, performance per hour worked in Spain is only 76% that of the European average and only 63% of Germany’s amount. Due to this, some think that reducing time worked could be risky for the country’s economy.

Doa Rodríguez, a design specialist who is on Hack a Boss’s marketing team, thinks that the four-day workweek actually makes you more productive. “You feel better rested and concentrated on your tasks. There’s more time lost in the five-day formula,” she says. After six months at Hack a Boss, she compares her current routine to her last 9-6 office schedule, which didn’t leave her much time to do other things. Now, she can spend her day off with loved ones, or studying and learning. “The week flies by,” she says.

For her, schedule flexibility and the four-day work week are crucial, though the latter may be the most important of all. “Beginning when we’re young, at school, they teach us to work five days a week and a set number of hours, but with a model that allows you to plan your work across four days, you don’t feel strange having Friday off, and you take advantage of mornings to do activities like taking a walk, or whatever you like, without feeling that weight on your conscience.”

At the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2023, Sander van ‘t Noordende, CEO of the human resources consulting firm Randstad, qualified the four-day workweek as “a business imperative.” After presenting a report that demonstrated how the model improved worker health and reduced contamination, van ‘t Noordende encouraged employers to change their attitude towards their employees. “We ask the clients what they want and try to do the best work possible for them. We should treat talent in the same way.”

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