Episode 240: How Has the Four-Day Work Week Reshaped Work-Life Balance and Productivity for Our Team?

 
 
 

How does jumping off of a 40-foot cliff in Puerto Rico lead to an epiphany that a 4-day work week needs to happen? 

 

We’re here to tell the tale. 

 

In today’s episode, Erin shares her story of first pondering and ultimately implementing a 4-day work week with the improve it! team, how she’s found flexibility within the 4-day work week itself, and each internal team member’s reflections on how the 4-day work week has gone since October of 2023. 

 

Erin shares The 3 Bs—balance, boundaries, and breaks—and how our team uses this system to reach our goals, now working 36-hour weeks instead of 40-hour weeks. 

 

If you’ve ever considered a 4-day work week and want to learn more about how to actually implement it—this is the episode for you. 

 

Special sprinkles on top of this episode: how we’re redefining what a “break” means in the middle of the workday 

 

What are the consequences of a 4-day work week? 

 

Pros of a 4-day work week can include cost savings, increased productivity, and employee retention. Some disadvantages, however, can include scheduling challenges, reduced productivity, and added stress. -TriNet 

 

Is it healthier to work four days a week? 

 

Results showed people in the program had higher self-perceived health status, reduced levels of stress, were less tired and felt happier and more personally satisfied. The drop in commuting also led to a reduction in nitrogen dioxide emissions and improved air quality. -The World Economic Forum 

 

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Connect with Erin Diehl: 

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Apple | Spotify | Stitcher | Android

 

Erin Diehl is the founder and Chief “Yes, And” officer of improve it! and host of the improve it! Podcast. She’s a performer, facilitator and professional risk-taker who lives by the mantra, “get comfortable with the uncomfortable.” Through a series of unrelated dares, Erin has created improve it!, a unique professional development company that pushes others to laugh, learn and grow. Her work with clients such as United Airlines, PepsiCo, Groupon, Deloitte, Motorola, Walgreens, and The Obama Foundation earned her the 2014 Chicago RedEye Big Idea Award and has nominated her for the 2015-2019 Chicago Innovations Award. 

This graduate from Clemson University is a former experiential marketing and recruiting professional as well as a veteran improviser from the top improvisational training programs in Chicago, including The Second City, i.O. Theater, and The Annoyance Theatre. 

When she is not playing pretend or facilitating, she enjoys running and beach dates with her husband and son, and their eight-pound toy poodle, BIGG Diehl. 

You can follow the failed it! podcast on Instagram @learntoimproveit and facebook, and you can follow Erin personally on Instagram @keepinitrealdiehl here. You can also check out improve it! and how we can help your organization at www.learntoimproveit.com. We can’t wait to connect with you online! 

 

Episode 240 Transcription

Erin Diehl (00:00.201)

Hello my beautiful Improve It peeps. Welcome to today's show. I am your host Erin Deal, the founder and chief edutainment officer of the professional development company Improve It. We use improv comedy to train professionals to be their highest selves through play. And this is the Improve It podcast.

If you've pressed play here today, there is no mistake, you were guided here and you probably saw this title and thought, hmm, I want to know a little bit more about that. We're talking all about the four day work week and how it has reshaped our work -life balance and productivity for our internal team here. Now, here at Improve It, we have a lean, mean internal team. We have a strong team of facilitators and contractors who work with us.

So when I'm talking about the four day work week, I'm talking only W2 employees here. So I want you to know that. And our W2 employees are myself, Jenna McDonald, our VP of client experience, and Nicole Insereth, our marketing manager. So there's three of us here. It makes it a little bit easier than an entire company going to a four day work week. But I will tell you as a small business, the decision to go to a four day work week did not.

So before I go any further and give you all the goods today, I have a couple housekeeping things. Number one, if you are new to this show, or, or if you are a listener and have not yet joined our newsletter list, get you some and get on it. Every Wednesday, we release a flyer that goes deep into the content that we talk about here on the show.

We also provide you links with special discount codes to all cool things on Wednesdays and Fridays. We give you our FAIL newsletter that is filled with the acronym, Failure, Awakenings, Insights, and Laughs. And let me just tell you, this newsletter is probably one of my favorite things that we do. We have gotten so many compliments on this and how people look forward to it in their inbox every Friday as a way to recap the week.

Erin Diehl (02:18.505)

and laugh going into the weekend. So guess what? We scheduled that thing on Thursdays because we don't work on Fridays. So here's the beauty of automation and the beauty of a four -day work week. Now, as we talk about this, and just so you know, you can join our newsletter by going to itsarandeal .com.

at the bottom of that page. You can see a place to enter in your name and email. You can go to the link and the show notes that we've provided here as well to get on that newsletter list. So just a quick recap on how we got to this four day work week. If you're new or you just need a refresher, I'm going to give you the Cliff's Notes version. In 2023,

I had a concussion. I jumped off a 40 -foot cliff in Costa Rica, hit my head on the water as I landed, and walked around with a concussion for about four weeks without realizing that I had what is called post -concussion syndrome. And these symptoms lasted for not only four weeks, but for four to five months. My vision was impaired, my head was throbbing, my neck was in constant pain.

It was hard. Everyday tasks were hard. It was a brain injury. And I realized that this was the universe literally hitting me over the head saying, you need more self -care, woman. You need to take better care of yourself if you want to take care of others. And funny enough, the book I launched, I See You, a leader's guide to energizing your team through radical empathy.

is all about radical self -care, radical self -love, so we can radically empathize and be compassionate to the people that we lead. And it was funny because when I went on this trip, I was just about to turn in the manuscript. And when I got back and had the concussion, let me tell you, she not only had to talk the talk, but she had to walk the walk. So as I realized that my...

Erin Diehl (04:34.697)

physical and mental health was my greatest form of wealth. I started to ask myself questions about why we have 40 hours a week to work, why work takes priority over living, why work takes priority over our family time. And I got really clear with myself on why in the world I decided to take this risk.

start a business, start a podcast, create a book in the first place. And the answer to that question, my friends, is freedom. I wanted freedom in my life, freedom to choose, financial freedom, freedom of my time. And I realized that for the past 10 years of building this business, I have been a prisoner of my time.

and I was the person who put me in the prison cell.

Let me let that sink in for a minute.

Erin Diehl (05:45.769)

Not only that, I have a almost five -year -old son who was a miracle baby boy. I'm talking about the most miracle of miracles. And I wasn't spending time with him. And when he got me on a Saturday and Sunday, he got this watered down version of his mom who was trying to make up for lost sleep, who was trying to have a social life.

who was trying to keep her self -care regime intact. And he would get her in bits and pieces, but he never got the whole her.

And so I started really thinking about currency. And for me, time is my currency. I'm very blessed. I am married. I have a very successful husband. He provides for us and I provide for our family. Let's make that clear. However, both of us running this rat race at the pace that we were going was not sustainable.

I could not sustain it with the brain that I had at that moment. I couldn't even get out of bed without being sad or depressed for about two months. I felt this deep calling to change it up.

And as a leader, I talked to several business owners about this. Many of them told me, well, you're the boss, you're the leader, you just take it. Don't do that for your team. That's crazy. That's nuts. And that's not the type of leader I want to be led by. And that's not the type of leader I am. That's not the environment or the tone I want to set. Can you imagine if I was like, hey, team, I'm taking every Friday off. Good luck. What tone does that set?

Erin Diehl (07:45.737)

So I said, we're doing this and we're doing it collectively. And we decided to do a 90 day trial for a four day work week. Fridays were already no meeting day Fridays. So we said Fridays make the most sense. It gives us a three day weekend. We're already not taking external meetings or internal meetings on Friday. How can we work smarter, not harder and automate as much as we possibly can.

to maximize our time in the office and give us more flexibility with our life. So I have two episodes for you of this show that give you the nitty gritty of that. Episode 210 of this show, Work Less, Achieve More, Tales from a Four -Day Workweek is if you scroll down in either the iTunes, Spotify, wherever you listen to the show, you will find it. We'll also put a link to that episode in the show notes.

if you want the nuts and bolts of why we did this. There is another episode, episode 216, How Does a Four -Day Workweek Impact Your Team with special guest Jenna MacDonald. So we talk about the findings that we found from this 90 -day trial in that experiment. That episode aired in December of 2023.

I am giving you this episode in May of 2024. So you are getting a longer picture view here in this episode of what it's been like. So we did the 90 day trial from October of 23 to December of 23. We got really clear on why we're doing this as an organization. So it wasn't just my experiment, it was our experiment.

It took me getting clear with myself first as the leader to bring this to the team. And of course there was some trepidation, but also excitement. And I will say this, no one got a reduction in salary. Salaries remained intact. How are we gonna get everything we need to get done in four days was the question. But first we needed to examine the why and give ourselves to one of a manifesto or mission statement.

Erin Diehl (10:02.697)

Now, I'm going to read a part of this for you. The episodes I just mentioned go into this in further detail, but just a high level overview for you here as why we at Improve It decided to do this. So as a company, Improve It has decided to trial a four -day work week with an eight and a half hour workday. Studies have shown how shortening working hours greatly benefits employees and organizations.

As an organization, we want our team to be physically and mentally healthy, happy at work and in their personal lives, and become expert time managers. According to recent neuroscience research shared in Alex Sujong Kim Pang's book, Shorter,

Our brains actually keep working on problems when we turn our attention elsewhere, and scheduling a rest period after intensive work gives us time to recharge our batteries while allowing our creative subconscious to continue searching for solutions to problems that have eluded inner conscious effort. This team of recovering perfectionists wants to live out our values, to explore more, play and have fun, and drive results in the same creative and out -of -the -box approach we take with our work.

We want to retain our dream team, which is this team right here, build sustainable careers, hit our revenue goals, enjoy our families, friends, and hobbies outside of work, invest in our health, and take more time to just be. That was our manifesto. And my gosh, we wrote that in October of 2023 and May of 2024. When I just read those words to you, felt so dang good.

because we have embodied that. So.

Erin Diehl (11:51.177)

I want to just be really clear with you that this has been an experiment. We got through that 90 day trial. We hit the revenue goals that we set. We hit the mental and qualitative goals that we set. We all felt clear minded and healthier mentally and physically because of this. We all felt like we could get done what we needed to get done in those four days. So we decided to make it a thing. It's stuck. Now.

Here was the challenge. In Q1 of 2024, we launched a book. Never done that before. And let me just tell you, it came with a lot of learning, my friends. So for my team, the four -day work week continued. For me, Erin Deal, author, the four -day work week was null for about five weeks.

of that book launch. I had workshops on Fridays, I had events and book signings over the weekend, I had travel for Keynote on a Friday that I had the Keynote on a Sunday. I had a five -week period of just a constant grind in the middle of Q1 of this year. And what happened was when I wasn't in those five weeks, I made Fridays.

a day where if I was asked to go to coffee or I wanted to network with somebody a little bit more here in Charleston, I was using that day as Friday because I had no time Monday through Thursday to get outside of my house because I was so ingrained in my work. So we also said that on Fridays we will check email.

and respond to any client needs, especially if it's an emergency, internal needs should wait. And I'll never forget this. This was coming out of the book launch in March of this year, and I sent an email and Jenna sent an email, but Jenna has her out of office response on saying why we're doing a four day work week.

Erin Diehl (14:04.649)

And this client is a long time listener of this show, a huge fan and super fan of Improve It and we are super fans of her. And she emailed back and she said, you better not respond to this email until Monday. You better be taken that four day work week seriously. So respond to what I'm about to say Monday. And guess what? That got me offline. That got Jenna offline. That snapped me off my laptop and into my life real quick.

So as I realized that this four -day work week was such a wonderful experience in Q4, I realized that there are going to be seasons where I'm going to be working some Fridays. And that season will only be for launches such as a book. Or if I have a keynote. Sometimes you just can't plan when that work comes in what particular day it is.

But I realized when my client emailed us this that I was not living out our manifesto. And that I was in a season of life that is that, that's just it, a season. And I realized that I could break this trend. It did not have to be this way. So I incorporated what I call the three B's into

my life. And that particularly hit for me on Fridays because I needed more balance, I needed boundaries, and I needed breaks. So I asked Nicole and I asked Jenna how the four -day work week has helped them incorporate the three B's into their life. I'm going to share my examples and their examples.

And hopefully this can guide you to have a conversation with your team or your leadership about a four -day work week if this is something you're open to. So I decided number one, I needed more balance. So I really enjoy networking with people, but I was planning these networking things on Friday. So I would go to a coffee and then a lunch. And I decided that I'm going to take one day a week.

Erin Diehl (16:27.945)

and I am going to, sorry, not one day a week, one day a month, one Friday a month, and I'm going to use that day to network. One coffee, maybe a lunch, maybe go to an event if I want to. That's a social networking day.

So that was my balance. And I will tell you, I've done that, I've stuck to that, and it has worked beautifully. Number two, my boundaries. So I know that my workdays are limited and I need to remove the excess, the things that aren't gonna move the needle forward. So I started to really eliminate the calls that I don't think will be productive. I started to say no to opportunities if I don't think they're going to yield the right results.

or I don't think that they are a part of this purpose, priorities, and peace mindset that I've put into my life. And the third thing I implemented was breaks.

Now let me say this, I still go for walks during the work day. I still meditate in the morning before my work day. I still work out in the morning before my work day. I eat lunch outside most days, but I allow myself to be timed with these breaks so I get back and get the work done that I need to do Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. This has been a great shift in the way that my work is done.

I produce better work when I take breaks throughout the day, and Friday allows me to break free, to let my subconscious run wild, for me to shift into being mom Erin, not just run right into it on a Saturday. So the balance, the boundaries, and the breaks for me have made a huge shift in my life, and it's all because of this four -day work week.

Erin Diehl (18:32.265)

Now, I wanna share the three B's that I've heard from Jenna and from Nicole. Here are Jenna's three B's. So, Jenna's balance. She feels very focused at work Monday through Thursday, and she's able to get a lot done, because there's strong focus. Now, Fridays are usually her life admin days, and she said it's so great to have a day dedicated to catching up on all adult things, so that the weekends can actually be for fun and relaxation.

The four -day work week has helped her compartmentalize so that she can give her whole self to each area of her life and feel like she has the time to do so. Love that. She's compartmentalizing. And I agree with that. Because we are compartmentalizing, we're showing up as the version of ourselves we want to show up as. Here's what Jenna said about the boundaries that she has set.

Now, because there are less working hours with the four -day work week, she's very particular about how she spends her time. For her, that means creating boundaries with what meetings to take and how to be efficient with her meetings, creating agendas, action items, meeting timing, et cetera. She feels that she has better boundaries because she's working with limited time and has cut that fat from her day -to -day work so that she only does what is actually important.

There's no fluff work involved. And yes, that also means it's tiring, but in a satisfying way. Love that. And Jenna says for her breaks, she's still learning to take breaks, but she says that the four -day work week has shown her how to incorporate work into her life and not the other way around. We're all working for a reason, but we're also human beings who just want to be sometimes. And us focusing on this,

has reminded her that work is just one aspect of life, allowing herself to go for a walk when it's a gorgeous day outside and not feeling bad for taking those 20 minutes in the middle of the day because she is a human being who loves sunlight and needs it. So that is something that has really changed. I will say, Jenna's been with Improve It seven years and...

Erin Diehl (20:54.153)

She is going on her seven year sabbatical. This year that's a whole other thing we'll tackle in later episodes.

And we've had a lot of shifts. I mean, we were in the office 830 to 530, Monday through Friday for seven years, or six years, I should say. This shift, not only from working in office to remote to four a days, I know has changed the quality of her life, her mental and physical health, and it really does.

creates such an impact on the culture of our organization. So let's hear what Nicole says. Nicole says that for balance, her first B, that similar to Jenna, she feels like she has 10 times more focus spread across four days. And she's just as productive as when she was 10 times less focused, but spread across five days. Her life overall is balanced as a result of the four day work week because she's able to use Fridays as travel days.

Catch -up days are for chores and appointments, and then thoroughly enjoy Saturdays and Sundays and come back refreshed on Mondays. She has a clear separation between work and life and feels like the four days on, three days off is much better for her psychologically, socially, and physically. Could not agree more with that. Nicole has a way with words. That's why she's our marketing manager. I love that.

For boundaries, she says, it means where I can love herself and the work I'm doing or whatever else it may be at the same time. The four -day work week has made it very clear what she needs to cut from her day, automate or do smarter and not harder because she has no other option. It's been refreshing to work with a level of efficiency that she hasn't been able to attain before shifting to this work week style. And boy, boy, have we automated our marketing process.

Erin Diehl (22:54.729)

That could be an entire episode. If you want that, if you are a marketing leader, send me a message or write it in the actual review comments on iTunes. Tell me that you want an episode on how we've automated things. I think that would be a really cool, tangible episode for you. So if you want that, leave a five -star review in iTunes and make a comment there and I will make sure we do that for you. Then finally, for breaks,

She says, since the work she was doing during the four day work week is very concentrated and action heavy, she does tire a bit easier than she did during a five day work week. So she sets timers and gives herself shorter, more frequent breaks than she did before. And she's redefined what a break means. It doesn't mean looking at her phone for 15 minutes. It means closing her eyes, taking a deep breath, really focusing on how this feels, and then getting back.

to it. the best, the best. I really could not be more lucky. I truly have the dream team internally and with our facilitators and Kristi, our director of talent, Rachel, our podcast manager, Kennedy, our graphic designer, all of these people just bring this amazing element to our work. And I really think the four day work week.

has made such a tremendous impact on every single one of us. So I wanted to make sure and not share it not only my perspective, but the other people it's impacted. And I will say, the people who aren't nine to five -ers, Monday through Thursday, Kristi, Rachel, Kennedy, they all know that if you need something on a Friday, which most of the times they don't, to text, because we're not going to be on our Slack channel, and it's really worked.

out. Now if we have an event on a Friday which doesn't happen a lot, we're going to be a little bit more close to our phones just to make sure everything is going smoothly. But because we have automated our sales and our marketing as well as this podcast, we have really been able to keep balance boundaries and breaks at the forefront of this process. So I just want to wrap it all up. Our productivity has been on par. We have hit

Erin Diehl (25:14.537)

every monthly goal because I know if you're listening to this you're thinking okay well are you hitting goals what is that like what are your goals we are super super qualitative and super super quantitative when it comes to metrics at improve it and I will tell you as of this recording we have hit every monthly goal financially this podcast has grown

exponentially. Our social media has grown exponentially. The book, I See You, was a top new release and an Amazon bestseller and it hit number one in business health and stress on launch day. And guess what? We sold out of all the books. We have to do a reprint. We've been working smarter, not harder. And

Do we want to hit more revenue goals than what we've hit? Absolutely. I mean, let me just say this for free. If we were sitting here and we weren't hitting goals, this would be a completely different story. But I know because when I'm here, Monday through Thursday, super jet set focused on what each day is, that I only have limited time to make it happen. And my team knows the same thing.

So we get it done and that's why I think we're seeing those goals, but we're also honoring all of our core values, which is play, learn and have fun. Embrace your inner child. Have a qualitative and quantitatively amazing existence in this world. And what do I mean by that? I mean, feel your feelings, measure the results and live the life that you were meant to live.

I will say in terms of morale, as you heard from both Jenna, myself and Nicole, the internal team's morale is great. Our facilitators are happy. We have a variety of work that we give to them through our workshops, laugh breaks. We have got a new service offering called Book Club. We also have our keynotes that I get to do. And then we have all kinds of things coming down the pipe. So just know our facilitators are happy because they get to do work they love.

Erin Diehl (27:39.689)

We have a personal and professional life. Now I will be honest, my mental health has its ups and downs as everyone's life does, but most of the time I am able to allow myself more time to have a conversation with my coach, have a conversation with my therapist, meditate, be in nature on a Friday. And that has allowed me to just be.

And now I want to just share one last thing because I mentioned earlier that I allowed one day of or one Friday of every month to be my networking and social day. I'm trying something as of the recording of this show and I'm trying to compartmentalize my Fridays every month so that one Friday is a self -care day. One Friday is that networking and social day.

One Friday I get to travel and go somewhere, which I'm gonna do tomorrow. I'm going to Minnesota to see my in -laws. And then the next Friday is an anything goes. But I wanna make sure I get some travel in there. I see people and connect with people socially and network. And I also wanna give to myself. So maybe I book a massage or maybe I go to Reiki or maybe I just go lay on a beach and be while my child is at school and I have childcare.

I'm telling you this four day work week has changed our lives. And this episode was actually really fun to put together because it was a great reminder of how it's impacted not only me, but the amazing people that make up this team that bring you this podcast week after week. So here's what I wanna ask. If you have a question.

If you want to know more about how we've automated our systems, if you want to know what it's like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday around here and how we've compartmentalized our days and how we've really started to improve our time management, do me a favor. I want you to, number one, hit five stars on iTunes.

Erin Diehl (29:57.129)

And then in the comments there, all you have to do is go to the iTunes app on your phone, hit the five stars, scroll down and write a question in the comments. So I can see it, I can hear it, I can answer it and sign up for our newsletter. As I mentioned, the link for that is in our show notes or you can go to itserendeal .com and scroll down and you will see a space there to enter your email because I answer those emails. So if you're on our list,

and we send you an email and you reply back, I'll reply back to you so that I can have a conversation and hear from you what you want more of. This has been a really fun show, a lot of talking over here on my part. So wherever you are, stop what you're doing, give yourself a hug, tell yourself good job because you just invested some time into you. And I want you to know that...

The four -day work week is possible. There are so many organizations out there doing it. Read that book shorter that I mentioned there's case study after case study of organizations moving to a four -day work week. If you're a business owner listening to this show, I really want you to encourage yourself to look into this because it is a game changer. Get really clear on that why, and I'll tell you time is my currency, and I feel super abundant.

because of the four -day work week. I am so proud of you, Improve It peeps. Thank you for being here. As always, keep failing, keep improving, because this world needs that special it that only you can bring. I'll see you next time.

Erin DiehlComment