What Bolters are Saying about the Four Day Work Week

Our 4 Day Work week trial is coming to a close for our team here at Bolt. At the outset, we <a href="https://www.bolt.com/blog/switching-four-day-workweek/">shared with you</a> that “we’d be tracking our successes and failures closely—and, in the tradition of <a href="https://conscious.org/">Conscious.org</a>, sharing them publicly.” Over the past few months, we’ve done just that – sharing how we’ve approached <a href="https://www.bolt.com/blog/first-steps-four-day-workweek/">adjusting our schedules to accommodate a 4 day schedule</a>, as well as how our teams have <a href="https://www.bolt.com/blog/four-day-workweek-during-the-holidays/">managed our busiest time of the year</a>. Today, we’re sharing our team’s and managers’ feedback on how the four day workweek trial has impacted both their work and personal lives.<h2>What the Bolt Team is saying:</h2>In November, we surveyed the entire Bolt team to hear their feedback on our four day work week experiment. We wanted to gauge their sentiment toward the four day work week, but also to see whether work-life balance had improved, productivity had waned or increased, and a permanent shift to a four day schedule felt sustainable.Employee Net Promoter Score (<a href="https://lattice.com/engagement/enps">eNPS</a>) is a key tool we use to measure how our team feels about our company. Overall, the team’s eNPS in our recent survey related to four day work week was “excellent” at 67 (NPS measurement scales have a range of 200 points, -100 to +100).When we asked for specific feedback about working in a four day work week, our team shared the following:<ul><li>More than 50% of our team commented that they felt the four day work week enhanced their work-life balance</li><li>Nearly a third felt they worked more efficiently and were more productive during a four day work week, compared to a five day work week.</li><li>Almost 10% of the team commented that if they did choose to work on their fifth day they were able to get distraction-free time and do heads-down work more efficiently.</li></ul><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dugcmkito/image/upload/v1671828714/Bolter_Feedback_Four_Day_Workweek_a01e27e93b.png" alt="Bolter-Feedback-Four-Day-Workweek.png" srcset="https://res.cloudinary.com/dugcmkito/image/upload/v1671828714/thumbnail_Bolter_Feedback_Four_Day_Workweek_a01e27e93b.png 245w,https://res.cloudinary.com/dugcmkito/image/upload/v1671828714/small_Bolter_Feedback_Four_Day_Workweek_a01e27e93b.png 500w,https://res.cloudinary.com/dugcmkito/image/upload/v1671828714/medium_Bolter_Feedback_Four_Day_Workweek_a01e27e93b.png 750w,https://res.cloudinary.com/dugcmkito/image/upload/v1671828715/large_Bolter_Feedback_Four_Day_Workweek_a01e27e93b.png 1000w," sizes="100vw">On the other hand, with this four day work week being an experiment, we have an opportunity to make some improvements for the future. Nearly 40% of our team said they felt more stress Monday through Thursday compared with a five day schedule. 15% encountered external-facing challenges with our four day schedule, and nearly 13% commented that meetings needed to be consolidated even more.<h2>What our Managers are saying:</h2>At the beginning of December, we did a second 4-day work week survey, this time&nbsp; just for our managers. This survey mainly focused on assessing their team’s bandwidth and productivity during our trial, as well as managers’ ability to effectively coach/lead their reports in the 4-day work week environment.<ul><li>91% are in favor of moving forward 4-day work weeks</li><li>71% of managers say their team is able to complete their work sufficiently within a 4-day work week</li><li>87% of managers say their team has maintained productivity/service levels for its customers and/or stakeholders within a 4-day work week</li><li>85% of managers say their team is able to hit their goals/OKRs with the 4-day work week cadence</li><li>91% of managers also said they were able to adjust 1:1 time with their team to effectively support them.</li></ul>The two biggest changes managers made during the trial were to reduce meetings (+40%) and increase their asynchronous work efficiency (25%).<img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dugcmkito/image/upload/v1671828752/Manager_Feedback_Four_Day_Workweek_049e577371.png" alt="Manager-Feedback-Four-Day-Workweek.png" srcset="https://res.cloudinary.com/dugcmkito/image/upload/v1671828752/thumbnail_Manager_Feedback_Four_Day_Workweek_049e577371.png 245w,https://res.cloudinary.com/dugcmkito/image/upload/v1671828752/small_Manager_Feedback_Four_Day_Workweek_049e577371.png 500w,https://res.cloudinary.com/dugcmkito/image/upload/v1671828752/medium_Manager_Feedback_Four_Day_Workweek_049e577371.png 750w,https://res.cloudinary.com/dugcmkito/image/upload/v1671828753/large_Manager_Feedback_Four_Day_Workweek_049e577371.png 1000w," sizes="100vw">Finally, we asked managers how we could improve our four day work week if we continue it in the future:<ul><li>20% of managers said we should rethink our holiday schedule to keep Fridays consistently off (as opposed to working Fridays when a holiday falls on a different day of the week)</li><li>17% asked for more training for their teams on strategies for increasing their efficiency (whether that be through tools like Asana or behavioral shifts like creating focus blocks on their calendars)</li><li>12% of managers highlighted the need to model work-life balance at the leadership level.</li></ul>This data has given our team a lot of food for thought as we look ahead to 2022 and plan for the possible future of a Four Day Work Week here at Bolt. Our key hypotheses at the start of this trial were that work-life balance would improve, that we’d “become vastly more efficient from Monday to Thursday”, and that we’d be happier, more creative individuals as a result. By and large, the data validates those hypotheses.Armed with this information, it’s now on our team to determine whether a long-term shift to a Four Day Work Week makes sense for our goals and our team. There's a lot to consider. We’ll report back in the new year as we work through these key decisions for Bolt.