Moving your agency to a 4-day work week

With all of the talk about the Great Resignation and the challenges many agencies are having hiring and retaining workers, is now the time to adopt a 4-day work week?

What are the pros and cons of this policy — and is it even feasible for most agencies?

Chip and Gini tackle the idea that has become part of the conversation in many workplaces.

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Chip Griffin  

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin,

Gini Dietrich  

and I’m Gini Dietrich.

Chip Griffin  

And if you’re listening to us, then the clickbait worked. So we’ll talk more about the actual topic right after this we are not above clickbait headlines, so you’re not. So that’s what we went with. We are going to be talking about the four day workweek, which I know all of you would love to have. It’s like a popular topic of conversation. Four days, four hours, let’s go. Let’s go all the way back. wonderful book, The Four Hour Workweek the biggest piece of trash I’ve ever read.

Gini Dietrich  

Tell us how you really feel about it.

Chip Griffin  

i It’s what I blogged about it at the time. In fact, I think that the way I let it off was the book suggested that if you found something to be a waste of time, just stop it. And so I said, so I stopped reading at that point. Yeah, it was, it was a waste of my time. They weren’t were some good ideas in there. But you know, the the whole four hour workweek is just is a dumb idea. I mean, it’s not. It’s not realistic.

Gini Dietrich  

It’s really just like, click Beatty.

Chip Griffin  

Yes. Yeah, it wasn’t really I didn’t read it was actually at the book was actually advocating that you could do, you could work

Gini Dietrich  

just for hours or hours. How short?

Chip Griffin  

I mean? Well, you could if you could charge on out for those four hours that it covered, whatever you wanted to earn. I mean, you can work just four hours a week? Absolutely. You just have to either be able to charge through the nose for those four hours, or you have to not want to make very much. So you certainly could do it if those if those are criteria you want want to meet. But unfortunately, that books set an unrealistic expectation for people. So let’s talk about something that is a little bit more realistic. It’s in the realm of reality, the four day workweek. And there has been a lot of conversation lately, as people are thinking about, you know, what is what is the new work look like? Post pandemic, assuming we ever come out of the pandemic or you know, whatever it becomes, you know, how do we how do we structure work generally, and agencies are are, you know, trying to think creatively. And so I know a number of them are thinking about the idea of a four day work week? And is that something that could work to give the team some more flexibility to have a better opportunity to attract talent, all those different kinds of things. So the four day workweek, what are your thoughts?

Gini Dietrich  

You know, I’m, I am a fan, I have tried for many,