Has anyone successfully implemented a compressed work week allowing employees to work four 10-hour days? Looking for advice from those who have experience with this approach. What are the pros and cons? How should “similarly situated employees” be defined in this context? We are a fully remote, high-performing team in California with 20 members. Any insights would be appreciated! #CompressedWorkWeek #FlexibleWorkSchedule #RemoteWork #CaliforniaEmployment #WorkLifeBalance
Yes, we have folks on 4-day weeks, both in hourly and salaried positions. It really had to work for your org and work though, you can’t just give it to one off candidates (for the legal issues mentioned & for operations). Have you identified functional areas where it works, documented challenges where it won’t, etc.? When you explored it previously, what was the data? I think you would need to look at the company/policy level, not one team, unless you were doing a pilot (which gets dicey). The way to do this is absolutely NOT to start by offering it to new hires without figuring out what groups you’re offering it to and allowing current folks to opt in, that’s for sure though.
The state has offered 4 tens forever, and most of the major hospital systems in the state do as well so I’m not surprised you have people asking.
You can just offer it to everyone if it could possibly work for your team, or you’d have to do some job analysis and identify the roles that CANT do it and identify why and document the hell out of that. That might not be hard for you with such a small team but worth noting. If your team has hourly ees then that is where you have to be careful with your payroll set up but otherwise, it’s not very complex on the backend once you get your policies all set up.
We do 8 9s and off every other Friday (9/80 – 80 hours over 9 days).
I hated it when it rolled out 15 years ago, but you will have to pry it from my cold dead fingers now.
Make sure you consider all of the potential impacts to policy and administration. Here are a few to get you started:
What does your overtime policy look like? Do hourly employees get overtime after 8 hours each day, or 40 hours each week?
Would on call pay be impacted at all?
What about waiting periods in your leave policy?
How will you pay out holiday pay? The company I used to work for paid 8 hours of holiday pay. If you worked 10 hour days, you had to make up the 2 hours by either working 2 additional hours during that week, or using 2 hours of PTO.
What happens if a holiday falls on an employee’s scheduled day off? Will they get a makeup day?
How is PTO and sick time accrued? Place I used to work, employees accrued x hours of PTO each month. If employees take a day off, they have to use 10 hours of PTO, not 8. This isn’t noticeable if you’re taking a full week or PTO at a time – 40 hours is 40 hours whether it’s a 4 day week or 5 day week – but if employees want to take a day off here and there, it takes longer to accrue enough hours to take a 10 hour day off than colleagues who only worked 8 hour days.
My company offers “Flex Time” in the summer months. Either 4 10s with one day off or 4 9s with a half day. That’s just too long for me to be at work and I don’t take advantage.
We switched from M-F to 4/10. The way it was done was some people were:
Sunday – Wednesday (front half of the week)
Wednesday – Saturday (back half of the week)
MT, TF (donut)
I let my employees choose their schedules. Unless you are an establishment that is open to the public during certain times then I don’t know why businesses are stuck on this idea of 8-5.
Why do you care what hours the employees choose as long as the work gets done? Let them design their schedule to fit their needs. I promise you they will be happier and more productive.
I only work M-Th myself.
Not sure about 4/10s but 9/80 is very common in aerospace and defence. Lots of government roles here in Canada with the feds and provinces also let you work a compressed work week as well. Which is fucking mint because their work week is typically 35hrs.
We had a worksite in CA that did 4 10s. If they are non-exempt you’ll have to have a vote for an alternative work schedule so you won’t have to pay OT every day (unless that isn’t an issue) but people did like it and it worked. Not everyone worked the same 4 days.
One problem we ran into was ensuring people actually worked their 4 x 10 hour days. We found that many if not most shaved time off the 10 hour day but still took their Friday off. We actually rolled the program back for a short period while we addressed this issue. Getting to accountability without going full big brother was a challenge in a large organization.
Our standard workweek is four 9 hour days and 1/2 day Friday (8am-12pm). We have a few hybrid employees that go into the office as needed (no weekly requirement, they mainly work remotely). Everyone still fills out a timesheet to track their hours to ensure the work is getting done.
We allow employees a few schedule options: the compressed work week, standard work week, four 8 hour days and then 6 hours on Friday, etc. They need to have their schedule choice approved by their manager when they start and if they change it, but our compressed work week works wells and everyone enjoys the flexibility.
80+ employees nationally.
This is very common in logistics and distribution operations, either 4 10s or 3 12s. 12s are also common in nursing. Source: work in logistics and mom was a nurse for years. I believe the reasons for this are that in both these industries buildings often operate between 20 and we hours a day for a lot of the week, and due to certain aspects there is a significant time and efficiency cost to turning over the shift. I also used to work for a dentist who prefer 3 12 hr days so he could spend more time with his family uninterrupted when he was not working. In my business a lot of people like having three days off, it means less time spent driving, and longer spans of off time. Just have to make sure you have appropriate schedules to cover all the time and days needed to operate your business. OT is generally paid above 40 hrs per week in this case. In logistics this kind of schedule is a given, but it does lead to challenges as there are two different teams to cover all 7 days of the week, and we have to be sure to communicate well with our counterparts to ensure smooth transition of operations. But if your team can handle the longer stretches where people will be unavailable, and the details are all considered carefully, there’s no reason it can’t work. My father also runs a business where he will work 7 days a week for between a few weeks and a few months, and then take a week or two off. All depends on of it works for your business and employees. Good on you for considering it! As long as you think through the pros and cons, and make sure you think through what the change will entail, it very well could be a great thing to do! Sorry for the novel here, just a bunch of thoughts from a nobody on the Internet but I thought this was an interesting post.