Four-day work week can be a wild success

The most terrifying word in digital game design is “crunch”. It’s also the most exhilarating.

Crunch is part of the job for the team at Blackbird Interactive, an entertainment and game development studio in Vancouver. It’s what happens when everyone is racing to the finish line on a game, and it is both the most intense and rewarding part of the job.

“You put your entire life on hold, you strap in, you do everything you can to get the game out,” said Trey Smith, vice-president of development at Blackbird.

The feeling may be exhilarating, but after crunch, comes crash.

“Burnout is a real thing in the game industry, and burnout was just accepted as part of the deal,” said Smith. “We were feeling it.”

For a company whose specialty is problem-solving in art, tech and design, burnout was just another opportunity to find a creative solution.

Blackbird is now one of a growing number of employers choosing to improve staff health, happiness, morale and retention with a four-day work week.

The City of Merritt launched a one-year, four-day work week trial in September 2021 after concerns about burnout and staff turnover, and the Vancouver Foundation recently launched a six-month trial for its team.

Recent research conducted by 4-Day-Week Global suggests that a four-day work week is better for employees, with 97 per cent of participants in trials wanting to continue. In a pilot project by Microsoft in Japan, a four-day week with no loss of pay showed productivity went up by nearly 40 per cent.

Smith said Blackbird was particularly influenced by a large study in Iceland that took place between 2015 and 2019 in which workers were paid the same amount for shorter hours. They reported feeling less stressed, healthier and happier.

While the City of Merritt is trying out a shorter week, with employees working the same number of hours, just working four longer days, Blackbird chose to follow Iceland’s model and pay its employees the same amount to work less. A 40-hour week became a 32-hour week.

Blackbird selected two teams to participate in its six-month pilot that launched at the end of 2021. Teams were given detailed surveys to fill out, measuring stress levels, job satisfaction, excitement and other variables, while management monitored productivity, quality and output.

“It was a wild success,” said Smith. Not only did employees adjust to producing the same amount of work during a shorter work week, there was no dip in productivity.

“After the transition, health and happiness and retention rates skyrocketed,” said Smith. “We did the impossible, and we were able to do it without losing quality or productivity.”

Christopher McLeod, a UBC associate professor at the school of population and public health, said that, “Renewed interest in the four-day work week has emerged from the dramatic reorganization of work that we all experienced during COVID. There has been a greater receptivity as to how we can work differently and make work conditions better.”

McLeod said the four-day week will likely work best for knowledge-based firms and creative sectors where management and staff share a high level of trust. The strategy could be more difficult to implement for hourly-wage earners and service workers, and for those who don’t earn a living wage. Having more days off to foster a better work-life balance isn’t going to help solve underlying inequities for such labour groups.

“If you’re in an environment where the employer is trying to squeeze every last ounce of productivity and the worker feels undervalued, it’s not going to work,” said McLeod.

Sima Sajjadiani, an assistant professor at UBC’s Sauder School of Business, believes the four-day work week is an idea whose time has come. “Since work-from-home began, people realized life could be better, and society could be more equitable.

“People saw the behaviour of big corporations during a crisis, where their first reaction was to lay off employees while companies didn’t lose a dime, and executives took huge bonuses and the burden was placed on lower-wage employees.”

Then came “quiet quitting,” pushback on social media, and even an increase in union organization. “People said, ‘This is crazy, I’m not going to stay,'” said Sajjadiani.

Sajjadiani believes pressure from the public will bring about the structural changes like four-day work weeks. “We still need people. We need human capital for organizations to thrive. (Artificial Intelligence) tools are not critical thinkers, they’re not agile, they aren’t team players, they don’t understand emotions.”

At Blackbird, after its pilot project wrapped up, every employee was on board, and the changes became permanent.

“You get health and happiness, an extra day with the family, or at the gym, or hiking with your dog, resting, recharging and being inspired,” said Smith. “(Employees are) motivated, they’re invested, and there’s camaraderie.”

1. Merritt to pilot four-day work week at city hall to attract workers

2. How to separate work from home, when working from home

3. More Vancouver offices adopting hybrid work options over clock-in, clock-out mentality

dryan@postmedia.com