In 2011, I worked on a PR gig so ridiculous it still sounds like a fever dream: we flew Seal to Cape Town to croon “Kiss from a Rose” at a 40th birthday party. Completely mental, utterly over the top, and hands down one of the most entertaining jobs I’ve ever had.
Fast-forward to this year, when I finally grew the courage to throw my half-baked thoughts about reinventing hoew we work onto LinkedIn. I expected silence. Maybe pity. At best, polite applause from my mum. Instead, my phone rang – and the name flashing up was Karen Lowe, my old boss from the Seal days.
Here’s the kicker: Karen is now the global Co-CEO of the 4 Day Week Global movement. She’d seen my post and basically said: “You’re onto something. Let’s go.”
And that’s how I found myself connected to one of the most radical global experiments in reimagining work – and realising that reinventing productivity might be just as radical as booking Seal for a birthday bash.
Rethinking Productivity at Its Core
Which brings me to Andrew Barnes, the New Zealander who sparked the 4 Day Work Week movement when he piloted the model at Perpetual Guardian – a New Zealand trustee and estate-planning firm with around 240 employees.
Barnes has always been clear on one thing: this was not an employee-wellbeing initiative. In his view, life balance isn’t the employer’s responsibility. The job of a business is to get the maximum return from the employees it pays.
But when he looked at the global data on disengagement, the maths just didn’t stack up anymore.
Gallup’s 2023 State of the Global Workplace Report shows that only 23% of employees are engaged at work, while 59% are “quiet quitting” and 18% are “loud quitting.” The cost of this disengagement? A staggering $8.8 trillion annually, or about 9% of global GDP.
And this isn’t just a “global north” statistic. According to Occupational Care South Africa (OCSA), absenteeism alone costs the South African economy R12–R16 billion every year. And that’s before you even factor in presenteeism, burnout, or the hidden costs of people who’ve mentally checked out but are still drawing a salary.
We’ve even developed cultural shorthand for it:
- Quiet quitting – doing the bare minimum to hold onto the paycheck.
- Job hugging – clinging to security while mentally checking out.
Barnes recognised the truth: no amount of laminated posters, forced “fun” away days, or a basket of sad bananas in the break room was going to drag people out of disengagement. It’s like offering a donkey a smoothie and expecting it to win the Durban July. What was needed was a wholesale reinvention of how we work.
The Pandemic Lesson: Productivity vs Presenteeism
I learnt this lesson the hard way during the pandemic. My team back then had developed this habit of constantly messaging me about their movements: “Going to the pharmacy.” “Quick appointment.” “Popping to the shops.”
At first, I thought it was diligence. Then I realised it was paranoia. They didn’t want me to think they were slacking just because I couldn’t see them at their desks. The irony? I was spending more of my time tracking and acknowledging their whereabouts than focusing on the work that mattered.
So I did some digging. How many hours of actual productive work do people get done in a day?
The research floored me. A UK survey found that in a typical 8-hour day, the average office worker is productive for just 2 hours and 53 minutes. Other studies widen the range to about 2.5–4.5 hours per day depending on the role. Microsoft’s research during the pandemic confirmed this rhythm: two main peaks of focus, late morning and late afternoon, each lasting roughly two hours.
That’s when it clicked. Why waste energy on surveillance when the system itself is broken? My approach became simple: I don’t care if you need to go to the pharmacy, or fetch groceries, or take your kid to the doctor. Provided you can comfortably tell me you’ve been genuinely productive for around 3.5 hours, I’m happy. Just get the important work done.
It removed their paranoia. It gave me back hours of leadership headspace. And most importantly, it created trust. And the surprising part? By loosening the grip, I actually landed up getting more out of them.
Now zoom out. If employees only generate ~3–4 hours of real output in an 8-hour day, then cutting a day from the week isn’t “losing 20%.” It’s cutting the performance pantomime – hours logged for the sake of hours, with about as much productivity as a Wi-Fi router in a thunderstorm.
The 4 Day Work Week: Lifespan vs Sprinting Output
So employers face a choice:
Do you want maximum output today?
Or do you want maximum output across the lifespan of an employee’s time with you?
Because the two are not the same. One looks like sprinting hard in the first few miles – burning bright, burning fast, and then hobbling like a drunk uncle at a wedding halfway through the Macarena. Sprint cultures chew through people like AA batteries in a toddler’s toy – lots of noise, flashing lights, and then suddenly dead. The other looks like consistency: pacing, energy management, recovery built into the system, and ultimately getting further as a team.
Purpose Matters in a Shorter Work Week
This is also where a company’s purpose comes under scrutiny. If your business purpose is nothing more than chasing short-term shareholder returns, don’t be surprised when your people disengage. Why should they push themselves through unrelenting pressure if the only end goal is to line the pockets of faceless investors? That’s a hell of a hard thing to rally people around.
But if you’ve established a purpose that people can believe in, and you actually live it, then work becomes more than a transaction. It becomes contribution.
And let’s be honest: too many businesses trip themselves up here. Pharmacies overseas are a perfect case. CVS Health stopped selling tobacco in 2014 to align with its health purpose. It took an initial revenue hit, but quickly rebounded as it leaned into healthcare services. Walgreens, on the other hand, continued to sell cigarettes – undermining its role as a health provider and opening itself to criticism.
One business aligned its purpose to practice; the other bent purpose to profit.
The 4 Day Work Week sits right inside this tension: it’s a test of whether leaders are serious about designing for long-term value or simply squeezing short-term returns.
The Evidence So Far: What the 4 Day Work Week Delivers
The data is mounting. In the UK’s 2022–23 pilot (61 firms, ~2,900 workers):
- 71% reported lower burnout; 39% less stress; mental/physical health improved.
- 57% reduction in resignations.
- Revenue held or grew, with some firms reporting 34% year-on-year increases.
- 92% of companies kept the model after the trial.
Microsoft Japan’s summer experiment showed a 40% productivity increase. Iceland’s trials covering 2,500 workers found productivity maintained or improved while wellbeing soared.
The conclusion: fewer hours doesn’t equal less work. It forces smarter work – shorter meetings, clearer priorities, tighter processes – and creates more energy to bring back the next day.
But Let’s Stay Real: The 4 Day Work Week Has Limits
It’s not a silver bullet – more like a blunt instrument that only works if you use it properly. Some firms actually made life harder at first, cramming five days of chaos into four and calling it progress. In sectors like healthcare or manufacturing, the challenge isn’t “Should we?” but “How on earth do we?” – you can’t exactly tell a hospital ward to knock off on Thursday and see patients again Monday.
Small businesses sometimes struggle too: shaving hours means adding people, and suddenly payroll looks like it’s been at an all-you-can-eat buffet. And yes, plenty of the glowing case studies come from smaller, self-selecting companies – so there’s still a need for big, messy, long-term data.
And don’t get fooled by copycat versions. A compressed “four tens” week isn’t a true 4 Day Work Week. That’s just working the same hours with less sunlight and a higher chance of crying in the parking lot.
So what does “properly” look like? It means cutting waste, not corners. Shorter, sharper meetings. Real priorities instead of endless to-do lists. Trust instead of surveillance. And the discipline to measure output, not hours.
And the reality? The 4 Day Work Week simply might not work for every business. Some models are too rigid, some customer needs too constant, some operations too complex. But that doesn’t mean the idea should be dismissed. It means the question is worth asking: what would reinvention look like for us?
The Reinvention Question
At its heart, the 4 Day Work Week is not just a policy – it’s a philosophy. It forces leaders to ask:
- Are we building for resilience, or burning for quarterly gains?
- Are we aligned to our purpose, or undermining it with contradictions?
- Do we want employees who sprint hard and flame out, or who pace themselves to deliver value over the long run?
The companies that get this right won’t just attract talent – they’ll keep it, grow it, and thrive because of it.
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