Can you fit 40 hours of work into 32 hours, while maintaining productivity, employee mental health and culture?
That was the question Banks Benitez pondered as Denver-based social impact accelerator Uncharted trialed a four-day, 32-hour workweek earlier this summer.
While the company’s top priority was keeping up with specific objectives and key results, Benitez said the three-month trial also kept a keen eye on employee mental health and company culture. Achieving success in each of those categories would determine whether Uncharted would make this move permanent.
“If performance was the same, but mental health and culture have suffered, then the answer is no,” Benitez said of continuing. “If we are just a machine of an organization, bereft of culture, we lose long-term.”
Now, after a three-month trial and an evaluation from a third-party reviewer, Uncharted has decided to move forward, making the four-day workweek a permanent fixture at the company.
Coeffect, a Denver-based company that helps organizations leverage data more effectively, was hired by Uncharted to host the third-party review. For the experiment, the company designed a process that evaluated team performance, hours worked, cultural impacts, self-reported mental health, personal life attributes and stress levels.
Coeffect captured baseline data at the beginning of June, took a mid-summer survey to understand if the team had changed its working practices and an end-of-summer survey to understand again how these dimensions have changed.
Internally, Uncharted created specific objectives and key results for the three summer months and evaluated its performance against those objectives and key results at the organizational, departmental and individual levels. While working 80% of their typical weekly hours, employees receive 100% of their pay and benefits during the four-day workweek.
Benitez said the company delivered on its performance goals during the four-day workweek, while maintaining employee mental health and the company’s social impact culture.
Uncharted employees’ median number of hours worked dropped by 23% from a median of 45 hours worked before the four-day workweek to 34.5 hours. And, in turn, managers across the 13-person company agreed that performance remained the same.
On the personal health side, work-life balance increased and work stress decreased across Uncharted, as employees took advantage of their extra day off.
“The team is super happy, understandably. In respect to the level of external forces, maintaining and nurturing team mental health, I think about that a lot,” Benitez said.
In optimizing its time, Benitez said Uncharted reimagined how meetings are run.
“We really put meetings to the test. What is the purpose, what is the outcome, what are the decisions and who are the participants?” he said.
While this process led to more impactful meetings, Benitez said they were mostly outcome oriented. He acknowledged that other types of meetings have a place in the workday.
“We might have a blind spot in terms of the open-ended brainstorm meeting,” he said.
There was also concern at the start of the trial that employees would be hesitant to ask questions of their coworkers, knowing that everyone is trying to fit things into a tighter schedule.
While the data didn’t reflect that concern, Benitez said Uncharted must encourage collaboration despite the condensed schedule.
“I do think there is an incentive to not try to bother people,” he said. “What we have to do is normalize asking around, asking for help.”
The company remains working remotely during the current pandemic and will do so through the end of this year, at least. Even prior to Covid-19, Uncharted had a flexible work schedule, encouraging employees to work two days remotely.
Benitez expects that flexibility to continue when an office return is safe, with employees having a 50/50 split of remote and in-office work.
As the company raises outside funding for 2021 and gears up to support early stage innovation to address wealth gaps in the U.S., Benitez is excited for the company’s four-day workweek future.
He said this is an example of the questioning and open-minded culture at Uncharted.
“When it comes to the four-day workweek, this is just one example of a larger driving curiosity of the company. We’re always trying to ask ourselves the question of why? Is there a better way to do it?”
