Can the work — and impact — of a nonprofit be squeezed into four days?
As groups emerge from the pandemic, some are betting the answer is yes. Shifts to hybrid and remote work during Covid broke tradition’s lock on workplace norms, and now the Monday-to-Friday schedule is coming into question. Some organizations see the four-day week as the logical next step to a kinder, more flexible workplace that’s more equitable and more likely to retain and attract talent.
Organizations package four days a week in a variety of ways: Fridays off, Mondays off, staggered days off. The shared ingredient is a reduction of hours — typically 80 percent of the work for 100 percent of the pay.
“We can’t compete on wages” with businesses, says Adam Jespersen, associate director of the Montana Nonprofit Association. A four-day week, he adds, is the equivalent of a 20 percent raise.
Interest in reducing on-the-job hours has been fueled by results released in February from a British pilot of 61 businesses that adopted a four-day week. More than 70 percent of the 2,900 employees at those businesses reported less burnout, and companies said there was no falloff in company productivity.
Some in the U.S. nonprofit world question whether the short workweek is feasible for direct-service organizations or those that operate six or seven days a week — think performing-arts groups. There are also concerns that the idea works only for charities with a preponderance of white-collar office jobs, widening inequality for frontline workers.
But nonprofits in the United States that have tested the idea say that with greater efficiency and a tighter focus on priorities, the shift doesn’t translate to lost productivity. Indeed, some organizations say moving to a four-day workweek forced them to embrace a much-needed strategic focus — and a trim of meetings that are the fat in almost everyone’s schedule.
The Chronicle spoke with four organizations that have moved to a four-day week along with a human-resources consultant. Here are their tips:
Start by getting staff input. Leaders should survey their employees before investing too much time in a plan, says Laura Laney, a senior consultant with Nonprofit HR. “Everybody’s different,” Laney says. “There may be people who are not interested in it.”
Leaders at First Step House, a behavioral-health treatment and housing provider in Salt Lake City, decided to explore a 36-hour workweek after reviewing research from Australia, Iceland, Japan, and Sweden. The organization’s implementation, however, started with conversations within each department as well as surveys asking employees to talk about the shift’s potential effects for their families, their clients, and other departments.
“As an executive team, we were able to slice and dice all of the data and identify what we thought the hiccups and challenges were going to be,” says First Step House HR director Jazz Hamilton. Leaders went back to employees to help devise solutions. “Staff came back with great answers,” he adds. “We built this from the ground up.”
Begin with a test of the idea. “It’s important to roll it out as a pilot,” says Sean Kosofsky, who was managing director of the Climate Advocacy Lab when it shifted to a four-day week last year. “By doing it as a pilot, it signals you’re open to input and can reverse.”
Climate Advocacy Lab conducted a 90-day trial in the summer of 2022. Common Future, which advances racial and economic equity through community efforts, ran a four-month pilot in 2021.
First Step House moved to a 36-hour week essentially as a trial run; it hopes to move later to a 32-hour week.
Practice taking a day off. Before it formally tried a pilot, Climate Advocacy Lab nixed meetings on Fridays. Staff still worked that day, but they couldn’t ask each other for help even outside of meetings. Also, projects that were due “this week” had to be completed on Thursday. “We had to keep reminding people, ‘That means Thursday at 5. There’s no Friday to do this.’” says Kosofsky, a 30-year veteran of nonprofits who’s now a consultant.
Consider if you will shutter completely on the off day. The Montana Nonprofit Association wanted to be available to members and the public five days a week so it started its pilot with staggered schedules. Some employees worked Monday through Thursday, others from Tuesday through Friday. But staff then had only three days to work together on key projects. “That created enough chaos that we walked that back toward the end of the pilot,” says Jesperson.
Set expectations with clients, partners, and donors. Most groups describe a communications rollout that includes mass emails to large groups of stakeholders and phone calls or tailored notes to donors or key allies. It’s critical to note your new hours in almost every communication, says Nonprofit HR’s Laney, through newsletters, email signature lines, social media, and the like.
Some nonprofits see the four-day week as the next step to a kinder, more flexible workplace that’s more equitable and more likely to retain and attract talent.
Common Future gave staff templates for communications with external partners and conducted role-playing exercises to practice how to handle conversations about the day off.
Measure productivity and employee satisfaction. Nonprofit HR’s Laney recommends “pulse check” surveys of staff at least once a month during a pilot and perhaps as often as every two weeks. Common Future collected data during its experiment through surveys, focus groups, and weekly time tracking.
Identify the priorities of each job, team, and the organization. Following the ideas of Greg McKeown, author of Essentialism: the Disciplined Pursuit of Less, Common Future staff members each wrote a job description that captured the essential elements of their position. Moving to a four-day week also required leaders “to be clear about the direction that we’re headed in,” says its chief operating officer Jennifer Swayne Njuguna. “We had to know the priorities for the organization because of the ripple effects that that would have for everyone regardless of their level or vantage point or type of work.”
“The four-day workweek has been a way we’ve been able to systematize our values,” says Joann Lee Wagner, vice president of people operations. At the end of the pilot, 77 percent of employees reported satisfaction with their autonomy — up from 62 percent previously. And 100 percent said they clearly understood their team’s responsibilities, an increase from 81 percent.
Limit meetings. Each of the groups we spoke with tried to trim or eliminate meetings. If every meeting previously had been scheduled for an hour, they now blocked out a 30-minute window.
Be flexible. A four-day week is not ideal for everyone, particularly those caring for children or other family members. At Common Future, where most of the staff are women and people of color, at least a quarter of the staff are caregivers, many of whom value flexible schedules more than a four-day week. “We understand that there is that invisible labor that women in particular often do that is not accounted for,” Wagner says. “Flexibility is one of the antidotes to that.”
First Step House asked each department to design its own 36-hour schedule that would best suit its workers and still meet client needs. Many of the frontline departments chose three 12-hour days; other back-end offices like finance opted for a four-day week with Fridays off.
Recognize that leaders’ behavior will be watched. If supervisors or a group’s leaders work or take meetings with outside partners on the off day, staff will assume they should do the same, regardless of the four-day policy. Njuguna of Common Future advises talking to staff on these occasions, explaining why the work was necessary and making clear that it’s not an example to follow. “These are different kinds of conversations than we’re used to in the nonprofit workplace.”