Making the 4-Day Workweek Work
The Context
The leadership team of a fast-growing professional services firm wanted to trial a 4-day workweek to improve employee well-being, reduce burnout, and retain talent - but they feared disruption to client service and operational delivery.
They didn’t want to hire extra staff just to cover the fifth day. They didn’t want to reduce employee pay. And they couldn’t afford to lose performance.
The Challenge
- How do you reduce working time while maintaining a 5-day client experience?
- How do you maintain full service levels without inflating headcount?
- How do you retain great people while also making the business more agile and cost-efficient?
The company needed a way to offset the lost fifth day - without compromising their people, their budget, or their performance.
The Solution
Shared Workforce Group helped the organisation implement a shared workforce strategy that aligned perfectly with their 4-day ambition.
Here's what we did:
- We identified team members whose roles had natural elasticity (e.g., Finance, Ops, HR, Marketing)
- Employees agreed to be released on the fifth day to do paid work through Shared Workforce Group
- SLA agreements allowed for guaranteed recall if business needed them back temporarily
- We handled vetting, onboarding, compliance, and off-site project matching
- Earnings from those fifth-day assignments were routed either to the business or the employee, depending on preference
This approach let the organization preserve capacity, maintain service levels, and reduce cost — all while their people gained flexibility and motivation.
The Results
- 4-day workweek implemented with zero drop in service
- Employees retained 100% of pay — and in some cases earned more
- The business saved 20% per role through cost contribution
- Attrition dropped by 18% over 6 months
- Clients experienced no disruption — and actually noted increased energy in staff
- Internal engagement scores increased by 23%
