4 Day Work Week Models

Andy
Hell yeah! More downtime, less stress, increased productivity. It sounds like a dream to most under the pump trade business owners. What’s the secret you ask? That’s what we’ll be discussing in this week’s episode of The Tradie Show. 

Ange
Hello and welcome to the show and today you’re going to meet Rachel Evans. Rachel is a world leading visionary. Thought leader, business pioneer, speaker, author, and advisor. She’s a CEO and founder of 4 Days 4 All and is an expert in transforming mindsets to adapt to a healthier mix of work and life. 

Andy 
Yeah, earlier in this season, we spoke to Lifestyle Tradie members, Tom and Jamie Dale, who have implemented our four and a half day working week in their plumbing business, J&T Dale Plumbing. So if you haven’t listened to this episode, scroll back through your feed and hear what they had to say about reshaping the work week in their trade business. 

Ange
Yes, this is a little bit different. The four day work week is based on the one hundred eighty one hundred model where workers receive a hundred percent of their pay for working eighty percent of their hours while maintaining a hundred percent of productivity. And according to a recent study, nearly half of Australian professionals think a four day working week for full time work will be a reality within five years. 

Andy 
While that sounds like it can work for the corporate giants with the larger workforces, what about trade business owners? I’m not going to lie, I think there’s some pushback from the trade industry that the four day work week isn’t a good idea.

Ange
I’m interested to hear what Rachel has to say. And yes, I believe there’ll be some head scratching about whether it’s something that trade business owners can implement given the nature of the work. 

Andy 
Okay, let’s introduce Rachel who’s been waiting patiently on the line. Thanks for joining us to discuss a topic that has the industry divided. Can it be done? That’s what we’re here to better understand. 

Ange
Welcome to the show, Rachel. 

Rachel
Hello guys. Thanks so much for having me. Pleasure to be here. 

Andy 
Oh, we’re so lucky to have you here today and I’m really pumped to listen about your four day work week. It’s on everyone’s lips, not just in the trade industry, around the world. So listen, let’s start this conversation here. Why has the four day work week gained momentum in recent years?

Rachel
I think it’s a combination of elements that has really brought it to our attention most recently. The largest one of those being COVID, of course. You’ll remember when we all entered COVID, we had those first kind of heady weeks in lockdown as we all tried to get used to that and figure out how on earth we were going to survive. And we kind of got into our little indoor routines. We were baking bread. We were making cocktails. 

Andy 
Sitting around the campfire, drinking beers and cooking steaks on the fire. 

Ange
That’s right. 

Rachel
In your backyard. Yes. And, uh, as we slowly worked out that we wanted to be connecting with people, we worked out that we were actually taking our freedoms and our lifestyle for granted. Many of us, and I’m sure you are listening as well, would have made some kind of promise to yourself that you would never take your downtime for granted again. 

Ange
Good call. 

Rachel
So I think that that is a huge part of how the four day work week has made it into mainstream media so often, especially, you know, in the first six months of this year. Ourselves in my businesses, we actually started doing it in 2016. And I think that You know, the early pioneers of this, it came from a need. You know, I stumbled across this concept. I didn’t even know it had a name. I just, as a working mum with two businesses, struggling to get my, you know, personal admin or self care time done on a weekend, when you’ve got young kids and you’re running around to 13 different sporting venues. You’re also trying to, you know, be a good spouse. You’re trying to fit in time for personal development. All of those things just weren’t happening. And I just decided, well, I think I need a day during the week where I’m not at work so that I can tend to these things. So I believe it’s a combination of need, you know, you stumble across it and number two, well, we certainly found a need for it because of what happened during COVID and the popularity, certainly in the media at the moment, you know, is around one particular model. And I think it’s great that we’re here to discuss other ways to do it today, which will hopefully bring to the forefront, the possibility that really just about any trade based business can jump into this.

Andy 
Yeah, I agree. And tell me and someone point out a tradie out there right now that doesn’t want to be heading away Friday morning for a long weekend, like business owners as well, everyone wants it. I think it’s the challenge of the business owners going, but how the hell do we make this work? And that’s where we’re going to get to a bit later today. 

Ange
Yes, there are models. So yes, we will get into explaining them. So Rachel, tell us why implementing a four day work week can be a win for all, no matter what the size of business?

Rachel
I think that size of business actually becomes irrelevant because it’s actually easy to do when you’re micro, you know, it might just be you and your apprentice. And it’s also quite easy though it may take longer to fully implement if you’re a 50 staff member business. You’ve got more team members to fill the gaps when you’ve got a team on rotating days off for their four day work week. It’s beneficial to both parties. There’s actually three parties involved, really. There’s the owner, there’s the employees, and then there’s the entity of the business itself. So we don’t want the owner and the business to be the same thing. It’s really important that we differentiate between those two because there’s different benefits for both. So those benefits for the owner, obviously, uh, more freedom from the business, you know, the same type of benefit that we want the team member to have. We want to make sure we’ve got a better balance between when we’re on at work and when we’re having a downtime. Now for owners and employees, you know, coming out of COVID, we’ve got a lot of people still suffering trauma that they don’t actually recognize from those times when they were in lockdown or just separated by closed borders.

So what we have to recognize is that there’s still a real possibility of burnout. And having this better balance four on and three off seems to dramatically reduce the possibility of burnout for overworking reasons. So that’s our biggest one from a humanitarian perspective. And I also believe it’s where we can make the biggest impact on humanity, like starting with the people who work for us. There’s all of these wonderful, uh, projects that we can give money to, uh, around the world. But if you really sit back and think about it, what greater impact can we have than to improve the lives of people who actually, you know, they’re giving the lion’s share of their time to making our business succeed. So in terms of, for the business, we’re looking at higher productivity and in many cases improved profits. So they’re the surface level benefits that we look at in the very beginning. 

Andy 
And I will just want to touch on that and just say that, you know, some of our members that have implemented this, are seeing the benefits and the profits being greater too. So if you’re sitting out there going, I don’t know about this. Well, I understand the pushback. I get it. I push back myself, but it is working. It is definitely working. So you mentioned earlier that there’s different ways of doing a four day work week. So can you explain the different models and how you think it could work in a service based business?

Rachel
Absolutely. So the media most often, in fact, I think exclusively discusses the 100, 80/100 model that, um, Ange mentioned just before. Where you’re getting a hundred percent of your pay, if you’re the employee, you’re doing 80% of the hours. And that’s on the proviso that there’s no drop in productivity. So that a hundred on the end is, productivity must remain the same. But we’ve seen in most cases will improve. Now that is pretty much exclusively used in the big business world and in the corporate world. So, you know, we’ve heard of Unilever trialing it, many of the big corporations in Australia and throughout Europe as well. And of course, in New Zealand, where a lot of the actual data from research trials has been undertaken.

Ange
Bunnings just did it too, didn’t they? 

Rachel
They are doing a version as well. So we’re talking about a really big business. Thousands of employees. Bunnings would be doing a rotating day off model of that 100, 80/100 of course. Bunnings is not closing three days a week now and opening four. Okay. And that, and when you just even stop to think about how that works for big business, that’s our first entry into understanding, Oh, hang on. For a tradie business, this doesn’t necessarily mean we have to close one day per week because that in itself is one of the big fears for an owner. Number one, how will we get all the work done? And number two, will our clients or our customers choose someone else because we’re now not open one day per week? Yes. Okay. So our first alternative model works exceptionally well in small to medium business for tradies is the one day close. Okay. That’s the most obvious one. In my business, we don’t work Mondays and we haven’t done so for many years. Many of the clients we support with this are in the automotive trade. So tradies as well, and they will either close on a Monday or a Friday, based on research they’ve done into the volume of phone call traffic, foot traffic that they might get on those days. So it’s probably a 50/50 split between closing Monday, closing Friday. Works really well if you are a small trade based business. You might have yourself, one other qualified tradie and maybe an apprentice. You all have the same day off. Everyone gets a three day weekend. 

Our next model is where we don’t close on a Monday or a Friday. So we’re still open for five days, but we’re going to give our team members a rotating day off. So this will work best when you’re sort of pushing up towards five team members and above. And in order to accommodate everyone doing four days, you will extend your opening hours. So think, you know, right now you guys might do 7:30 till 3:30 or something like that, we’ll extend to 7:30 till 4:30 or whatever is required so that in Australia, you are still meeting the requirements of the award, which is really our only guide and our legal requirement that we must meet. Okay. For our own team members in my business, we do four days, nine hours, which is 36 hours and we give our employees. The remaining two hours so that we bring them up to the award minimum pay standard. So I hope that if you’re listening, you kind of get the idea that you can make your own little cocktail here of what works best for you.

Andy 
So it depends on the style of work you’re doing too, right? When you’re doing construction and that sort of work for you to have a, to work harder for four days and have a Friday off, you can quite easily do that when you’re doing a maintenance work and customers are ringing you every single day, you know, it’s harder to do as a small team, but when you’re a bigger team, you can just stagger the days and it still ends up being the same way. And I suppose what a lot of people are having, a lot of maintenance style businesses have troubles with is no one wants to work weekends. Maybe, I don’t know if you’ve heard of this too, but maybe people can stagger those days over a weekend because some people that don’t have kids, they’d rather work the weekends, you know? So I mean, I think you hit the nail on the head, Rachel. Don’t go into this blindly, everyone out there listening. Try and build what works for you and your model. 

Rachel
That’s right. And it’s really important that we say up front, it’s actually a decision for the business owner that you are going to start a trial. So you need to put the time, the thinking space aside to really think this through because what you put to your team is what you’re starting. You invite the team to create the rules that will determine if the trial is successful. So if you put your team, I want hands raised who’d like to do a four day workweek, you’re probably going to get a disappointing result because team members will have their own fears. And just humans in general, we don’t like change. So when we don’t understand something, we will just elect to remain the same. Yep. So this is not, would you like to do it? This is, this is what we’re doing. We’re going to trial it for three months. Let’s all determine the rules of this, of its success. So super important to mention that.

When you’re doing a rotating day off model or there’s an element of rotating days off. One of the questions we often get asked is how do we determine who actually has a Monday or a Friday? Um, you know, cause they’re the gold star days. And the way that we’ve always advised is if you’ve got senior members of your team that you’d like to add an extra reward or benefit of employment to. You give them Monday or Friday and your junior members rotate through Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. And then it becomes something to aspire to, you know, to become one of those senior team members. 

Andy 
And it makes it like, I’m just thinking now, I’m like, that could work, that could work. Oh, hang on, what about when someone has a sick day, what about when someone goes on annual leave? You’ve got to have a team big enough so then you’re still not leaving yourself in a hole, right? 

Ange
I also think about tradies who are used to getting paid over time when they’ve worked X number of hours in the day, or they get paid extra money for after hours on a weekend as an example. People would be like, I don’t know how I’m going to do that anymore, so what, put them on a salary? And tradies are used to the, we’ll pay you by the hour, that’s the language we use. So that gets a bit tricky when we go, okay, well we need to actually switch everyone to a different pay strategy or pay model. 

Rachel
This is true. One of the benefits of moving to a clearly thought out four day work week is that you will offer your team members a salary to account for average yearly earnings of overtime. And then you will actually notice over time that overtime is reduced. 

Ange
That’s interesting, isn’t it? 

Rachel
You will have an element, it might be one or two people in your team who actually work for overtime. They are driven by it because there’s something in their life dictating more money, more money, more money. It’s important you understand who those people are so that when you’re putting together a salary, you can have that discussion with them. If people think they’re being taken care of in their salary, they’re less likely to say, but what about my overtime? Now that also raises the question, well, it sounds like this is going to cost me more money in wages. You mentioned sick time, Andy, and one of the benefits of moving to a four day workweek is actually decreased incidence of staff absenteeism because we’ve got a better balance. We’re feeling better about ourselves. We’re less likely to call in for a doona day because we feel like We’re more rested. So sick leave should drop off. And if there are certain employees that it doesn’t drop off for, they’re actually red flags that we’ve got the wrong people on our team. 

Andy 
And that’s really interesting you say that because that’s the same with companies that offer RDOs, which they find, which are a lot, but the ones that do. Depending on the style of business, if it’s a big corporation or small, but the smaller businesses they don’t tend to have as many sick days because those team members have that one day a month where they can go to the bank, they can do all those errands, they can do that stuff. So they don’t necessarily feel like they have to have a sick day. 

Rachel
Correct. So in terms of annual leave, if you’re a smaller business, you shouldn’t be trying to stay open five days with extended hours anyway and run into that issue when someone goes on annual leave, who covers. You should be on the close one day model, because then everyone’s having the same day off, you’ll have the same issue in a small team when you’ve got someone on annual leave, whether you’re doing a five day workweek or a four day workweek. 

Andy 
Yeah. So Rachel, I’m aware there’s a couple of other models as well, um, can you go through those with us?

Rachel
Absolutely. So the first one is what we call two crews. So this is where, again, you’re sort of looking for a team that’s pushing up around six, seven team members or more. And you’re able to basically do a one day close but remain open. So what that means is you’ll split your team in half and half will work Monday to Thursday and the other half will work Tuesday to Friday. So you’re covered across the week. You will probably do extended open hours with this one as well so that everyone can fit in. They’re 38 or 40 hours, whatever is required under the award. And it means we’ve got a handover point during the week. Now, what we’ve found over hundreds of implementations of the four day work week into trade based businesses is that communication around these handovers is dramatically improved because no one wants to come in on their day off to have to explain, fill in any of those things. Yeah. So we actually find an increase in levels of communication as well. That brings us to the final two, and one of them is kind of what you described before in the RDO, you know, once per month, except it’s on a fortnightly schedule. Now, just in case you’ve got any Americans listening to your podcast, that’s every two weeks.

So it means that once again, you can go for a whole business, close on the 10th day of the fortnight, or you can rotate it. And your team members usually only need to do an extra half hour per day to be at their 38 or their 40. So, it’s a great way to kind of dip your toe in the water. However, I recommend that you push on past the nine day fortnight once you’ve had a couple of months and you actually get into a proper four day work week model. Don’t stay there. There’s no need for you to do that. You can go the whole way. And the final one is what we call the hybrid. And this often works well in teams where you’ve got an office team that is, you know, more than one person. And you’ve also got your tradies and that might be some type of workshop based or they’re out in the field. So you might have your field based tradies on a, you know, two crew extended hour four day work week, but your office might be on a nine day fortnight. So you can blend the two different structures depending on the needs of the different parts of the business. 

Andy 
Yeah. Yeah. 

Rachel
So there are different models for small and medium business, far more than what you hear in the media.

Ange
So what happens when, because as you well understand in trade business, you often have Both the male working in the part in the business and then sometimes the she ends up in there too now. And I consider different phases of someone’s life, right? Four day work week to me I imagine is really attractive to someone who is very young, in their early twenties, they’re happy to work any hours, they’re happy for a longer day for instance to end up getting my last day off. But as I change my growth phase of my life, I’m now perhaps married and have little primary school students who are at school and working, like the school week is dropped off at 9 and pick them up at 3:30. And I start going now, these longer days for me actually don’t work very well because childcare, you know, is expensive. What have you seen that they’ve, people have been able to kind of get around that when both parties of the couple are working this four day work week and their days are now quite long? 

Rachel
We actually find that for the working mum and dad, you know, who are partners in the business and in life, that there’s no one structure that actually comes out in front. We’ve got wives who are all for their husband going and taking Mondays off and the husband lapping that up because he gets to do school, pick up and drop off, which he has not done before. Right. And that’s really special to him. And she’s happy for him to have a different day off to her. Then we have the ones who do the one day close and everyone’s off at the same time. When they’re both working in the business, we tend to find that the wife leaves the business early anyway when there’s young kids. So the extended opening hours, she’s kind of still being flexible there. And then we’ve got dads that might do the same thing. The extra hour really isn’t coming into it because if they were already putting the kids in after school care to get to 4:30 for instance, having them there till 5:30 hasn’t turned up as a big drama. 

Andy 
Yeah, no, no, I agree. I don’t think it is as big a drama there because most of those day centers now are open, aren’t they too quite late? 

Ange
One other thing that I’d love to raise, I was talking to my dad about this the other day and he was mentioning to me that he worked for National Geographic back in the late 60s, early 70s. And apparently National Geographic wanted to trial this four day work week in America. But they talked about it from a global perspective about rolling this out after a three month term. So everyone was really excited. And then the three months came to an end of the trial in America and they said, we’re really sorry, we’re actually not going to do it. Because the Americans have actually said to us, although we loved the idea of working longer hours and having a day off. We found that the day that we have off is really expensive, that we’re doing activities that we would have done on a weekend and I don’t have the capacity or the wages, for instance, to cover the curriculum that I want to do. And I understand it was a long time ago, but it was quite fascinating. 

Andy 
I reckon I could find something to do without spending money. 

Ange
Well, it’s okay if you live near a beach or, you know, and your activities, uh, aren’t spending money. But I guess that concept of now everyone wants to go to lunch and, and, you know, have you ever had companies who have implemented this over the course of time who have actually come back and asked for a raise in their salary, for instance, because of that situation?

Rachel
I hand on heart, can tell you I’ve, that is the first time I’ve ever heard that. So, no, no, we, we never have. Not even you know, recently with the pressure that there is on wages because we’ve got skills shortages, um, in our trade based industries. No. Never. No. 

Andy 
Yeah. Interesting. 

Ange
It is. 

Andy 
So what I want to sort of know is that, you know, at what stage in business is implementing a four day work week? Where do you like, where does it work best? Does it work at the very start, halfway through, anytime? What’s your thoughts on that? 

Rachel
The answer is: The best time to start is today. It doesn’t matter where you are. If you’re coming into business and you implement this right at the start, then I take my hat off to you. Like you will have such a better quality of life, such a better mindset to be able to make those tough business decisions when you need to. Hopefully a much more open mind to become a great leader. If you’re 20 years in business, 30 years in business, today is also the best time to do this. You probably really deserve a break by now, you know, a better quality of life. And when you transition to a different work week structure, it doesn’t just open your mind to what can be done at work. It opens your mind to what you can do in your life. And that often has you thinking differently about how you would run your business to start with. So we end up on a pause to betterment, not just because of what’s happening at work. So, that’s why today is the best day. 

Andy 
Yeah, and it’s interesting you say that, because I suppose I’m looking now and I’m thinking, okay, you’re a business, you’re an amazing tradie, but your business is run very, very poorly. You wear all the hats, you’re severely stressed, there’s all these dramas, like, yeah, of course I want a day off. But because you’re so unorganized and things aren’t running that well. Is it going to work for me? And that’s a good question. But I definitely know that the people that you’ve been working with have been coached to get the right structure in the business, the right systems in the business, like we do at Lifestyle Tradie. And if you’ve got all that in place, I would assume that doing the four day work week is a bit better. Would you agree with that? 

Rachel
100 percent agree with that. One thing the four day work week will not fix is an unproductive, inefficient business. If you have those challenges, you must fix those first. So in automotive, in the aftermarket, we’d like to see a business, you know, at least 70 to 80 percent productive, meaning we charge out that many hours first before we change our work week structure. When we’re not, it means that we either don’t have the work to supply or we’ve got written off hours. So it would be very similar for the tradies that you’re looking after. So it doesn’t fix that problem. That’s a system related issue. What it will do, is amplify the good result that you already have. So if your guys are correctly charging out or billing as they should, they’ll be more inspired to get their work done on time and with the quality that you need in order to keep the benefits of their four day work week once they’ve been doing it for a while.

Andy 
Yeah, 100 percent agree with that. I think that’s 100 percent right. You have to have your business, your structure, your systems, everything running right to get that capacity and, and make sure that you’re, you’re kicking those goals. 

Ange
I think about the benefits from a culture perspective of implementing something like this or a variation of this, and I understand there’s plenty of models that you’ve talked through that could perhaps work for a service based business. But if you were an aspiring apprentice coming into this and you had multiple choices as to who to go and work for before they actually start their own business. I can imagine that this business who does offer a four day workweek is super attractive. 

Andy 
Well, I think if you’re an apprentice and you’ve always got a bloody day off a week, they’ve already on a four day work week for somebody, you know, but yeah, and some people do one day a week and some people do a week a month. And I would, I would assume that they wouldn’t be counted in, in this four day work week because they’re already having that. Rachel? 

Rachel
Definitely with apprentices and TAFE situations, you need to look at their TAFE day. And you need to look at, uh, what is actually best for their advancement. We have a mix of both where, you know, it’s 50/50 whether they’re only having them work three days in the, in the workshop or in the field. And the other 50 go no, go to TAFE and come and do four days. So that they get the development that they need. That is an employer decision. 

Ange
That to me sounds like a huge carrot to dangle, though, if you had an apprentice to say, you don’t benefit from this just yet, but you’ll get this as soon as you complete your time.

Rachel
Or even once we can see, you know, X, Y, and Z, in terms of KPIs, you can join the team on the four day work week. 

Ange
Yeah, definitely. 

Rachel
It’s actually your best recruitment tool in this current employment market. And that is for all team members, not just for apprentices. 

Ange
Not just employment, but retention. 

Rachel
Definitely. Yes. 

Andy 
So the big thing I’m seeing out there in the market right now is people that are looking at introducing the four day work week, whichever model that is, and I think When people hear about a four day work week, they go, no, that’s not going to work in my business. But hang on, hang on. When you listen to what Rachel says, you can set it up however you want. You are the business owner and there’s a lot of variations in there. But if you do go down this path, there is no doubt about it. It is easier to employ good employees at the moment. And when most tradies out there are struggling to get good staff, a lot of people I’m talking to are looking at going down this model to attract these staff from other businesses to bring in their own. Are you seeing this as well, Rachel? 

Rachel
Absolutely. We are. And I think from a retention point of view, so we want to keep our best people. There’s no question about that. And we want them, you know, we earn loyalty in some respects. We buy loyalty with the benefits that we put on offer. And if you want to stand head and shoulders above everybody else, then you have to think about your attention strategies differently, it can’t just be, you know, a booze up once a quarter anymore when you take the team out, you know, that’s often fraught with danger. And in terms of bringing the best quality candidates to you. You can put your standard job ad out that advertises, you know, a great salary and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But then you’re getting people to think about money first. And we know that occasionally that will attract the sharks and not always a great culture fit. When we put lifestyle and balance out the front, we get those people that are genuinely interested in well being, in Teamwork, because it does require teamwork in a trade based business to get everything done so everyone can go home.

Ange
So we’ve been having this conversation about Gen Z and that this new generation coming through is going to be our workforce very soon. I mean, they’re already there and they’re very driven by purpose and wellbeing. So in my mind, this is something that would be super attractive to that generation coming into a business, knowing full well that in their conscious and subconscious, they go, this company actually cares about me living a fruitful life and getting the best out of life. It’s not just to your point about wages necessarily, although you’re still going to still pay them well, that you’re actually encouraging them to look after their wellbeing, look after their families and looking after the community and taking care of themselves and enjoying life. That’s the reason why we’re here. 

Rachel
I couldn’t agree more. And, you know, it’s refreshing on the one hand to have this new generation coming through, you know, after the last few years of potentially having people in our teams that are just jumping from place to place. And, you know, we can’t get settled in our teams. I think as well as you know, Gen Z being interested in those things. The other really important demographic to look at for a four day work week is women. Now, we don’t traditionally associate women with trade based businesses as our first thought, but we’ve got women who are behind the scenes. We’ve got women who are partners of the original tradie in the business. And there was a recent Deloitte study that showed as much as 42 percent of women are considering leaving their employer in the next one to two years because they can’t find the balance thereafter with their current employer. So they can’t get flexibility to be employees, mum and partner, which are the very reasons why I told you at the start of the podcast that I started a four day work week.

So if you want to be able to retain women in your team, and there are various benefits to having more females on your team that are, you know, documented and out there around our teams have better communication, there’s a better humanitarian aspect to your team. The culture is usually better. If we want to retain them. Um, then we need to be able to offer them flexibility. So a four day work week ticks the box there as well. 

Andy 
Yeah, I really agree with that. And we’re, we’re finding that and with the Lifestyle Tradie as well, you know, and I think, um, that’s something that everyone’s looking for staff and some people like to bring the young staff through. Some people like to have more mature people that have been around, but when you get more mature people, they obviously have kids and there’s other scenarios and how do you adopt and help with that? And I can understand how a four day work week can be huge for those guys as well. So if a trade business owner is keen to implement a four day work week, what is the first step that you recommend they do?

Rachel
So the first step, if you want to DIY this, is to allocate the time to think about which model you think is going to work best. And to designate the start date of your trial period. So when you put this to the team, it’s never, this is the way we’re doing it from now on. We’re going to be doing a three month trial. If you were a massive corporation, you’d probably be undertaking a 12 or 18 month trial. We don’t need to do that. We’re small, we’re nimble, we’re flexible. Okay. So. Decide your model, your starting model, decide your trial start date, set a meeting with your team to give them as much information about the four day work week, the model that you’ve chosen and the benefits to them and the business.

Then you will invite them to create some rules around the four day work week. So we must always be doing this. And if this happens, we have to reconvene. And pivot because what we’ve been doing isn’t working or you might decide and this has only happened twice out of the hundreds of businesses that we’ve assisted in this area if you might decide that you all just want to do a five day. Okay. Very, very unlikely, but it is an option. This is a trial. Okay. So the number one mandated rule is that productivity cannot drop below current levels. Now profitability should improve because your team members are actually more motivated to get their work done. So, you know, charge out that extra couple of hours, finish that job that maybe they wouldn’t have finished until Tuesday of the following week.

Okay. So we tend to get more, more efficient and this is what helps us with profitability as does our declining sick leave. So not being able to get to that job at all because we don’t have enough team members starts to come down as well. So profitability needs to be heading in the right direction. It may remain stable initially, but it should eventually start to move. If absenteeism doesn’t decline, or if we see that certain team members are still having their same rate of absenteeism, then that requires a one to one with that team member that they’re putting the whole trial at risk, basically. And you may also want to deal with that team member in a performance management way. And then there’s the day to day. So our handovers have to be spot on. We can’t be having people come in on their day off. You also want the team to be really clear on what needs to happen when you’re not there. Because if one team member sees another team member doing something, that’s going to put the trial at risk. You want them to call them on it so that they get back into line. After a couple of weeks of having three days off, your team is going to police this for you.

Ange
I bet. 

Rachel
Okay, if you’ve already got a good culture and some good players on your team, they should do it for you. Now, if you discover partway through your trial that you’ll one day close, maybe not working as well as you thought, then you pivot to extended open hours, rotating day off, allow yourself the flexibility. It doesn’t mean stop failure. It just means pivot and try a different version. So that’s the DIY way to do it. Of course, at 4 Days 4 All, we can facilitate that with you and we have two versions of that. We’ll provide you with everything you need in terms of helping you work out which model, trial start date, how do we explain it to your team and then you go off and start your three month trial or we can hold your hand for the first six months. But whichever way you choose, remember, it’s your decision as the owner as to when you start and what model you start with. 

Ange
Because I can only imagine that although you’ve said there is flexibility, that as a team, if they end up regrouping and coming back to five days, then so be it. But the reality is, whatever you start tends to be where you’re going to continue. So are you happy to do that for the long term? Be committed. 

Rachel
Yes, absolutely. And be resolute. If you have one team member who You know, in the past, you’ve had issues within other areas. Maybe it’s, you know, going slow so they can qualify to move into overtime or whatever. And they arc up because they feel like their overtime is in jeopardy. Well, you’ve got to, you know, kind of separate that and say, Hey, we’re doing it. Are you coming along for the ride? Or Is it time, you know, that we had a discussion about you moving on? Sometimes these are the type of discussions that speed up the process of you moving on that person that was never going to allow something like this to succeed.

Ange
Yeah, absolutely. Fantastic conversation. I think it’s actually really important that we do discuss both sides of the fence. I really love this podcast because there are definite benefits to moving to four days for the trade industry, but I can completely understand the hesitance when this has just been the way it’s always been.

Andy 
And I know a few of the older guys, and I’m one of the older guys, we look at this and we think, God, the world’s going so woke. Is this just another woke thing? Like I, I, I get it. I get it.

Ange
Is it really here to stay? 

Andy 
But if you really go back and listen to this podcast time and time again. You’re the business owner, you make the decision. You’ve got all the cards, you play the cards you need. And I honestly do think if you are looking at going down this path, and as Rachel said, they’ve proved it hundreds of times. Profitability has gone up. So listen, Rachel, we play a little bit of a game here at The Tradie Show. So I’m going to quickly hit you with three rapid fire questions. Are you ready to go? 

Rachel
I’m ready to go. 

Andy 
So what is one strategy you use to start your day right? 

Rachel
Always, always get up when your alarm goes off. 

Andy 
Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Get up there. 

Ange
No snoozing. No snoozing. I’m with you. Out of bed. 

Andy 
I’ve never done the snooze button. 

Ange
No, never. 

Andy 
I’ve never done the snooze button. But you know, we’re early starters too. So when it’s like, yep, let’s go. 

Ange
Yeah, I love the mornings. Best time of day ever. 

Andy 
So what is something that has made you smile recently? 

Rachel
Something that has made me smile recently, I think it was actually just yesterday, my team hit our giving target that we set to reach in April of 2024. We hit it 10 months early. 

Ange
Oh, wow. 

Rachel
We, uh, had aimed to create 250, 000 giving impacts, uh, through our partner, B1G1. And we got there yesterday. 

Ange
Oh. Congratulations.

Andy 
Round of applause. 

Rachel
That really made me smile. 

Ange
Yeah. Yeah. That’s amazing. 

Andy 
That’s awesome. And what’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received? 

Rachel
Certainly my favorite piece of advice, especially for how I, uh, live my life is you can’t expect to hoot with the owls at night and then fly with the eagles in the morning.

Andy 
That is so true. See, going to bed at 8:30 to 9 o’clock, I’m all right. Rachel, that is great. We’ve really enjoyed talking to you today about the options of the four day work week. You know, who knows, perhaps we’ll see a massive shift in the trade industry in the coming years. But thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and we really appreciate having you on here today. And as you said, someone wants some help, then you’re there. So what they can do is they come to Lifestyle Tradie and we can show them how to structure their business the right way. And then you can come in and show them how to do the four day work week the right way. 

Rachel
Sounds amazing. Can’t wait to see the results of everyone out there listening to have a a really serious crack.

Ange
Perfect. Thanks, Rachel. You’ve given our listeners plenty to think about, that’s for sure. And you can learn more about the empowering work Rachel does at 4 Days For All, The Real Rachel and the Workshop Whisperer by visiting Rachel’s websites, which we’ll include in our show notes. So Andy, that’s all we have time for today, but I’ve loved hearing all the different perspectives. It keeps things interesting. 

Andy 
It does keep things interesting and hopefully everyone out there has a chance to really think about is it going to work for them or maybe you think it’s not and that’s totally fine. 

Ange
So. This is the final episode of our season. 

Andy 
And we’ll be having a short break and we’ll be back for season 11.

Ange
Until then, do that one thing in your trade business that will take you a step closer to where you want to be. 

Andy 
Take care and bye for now, but before you go, there’s one more thing I want to say. Hell yeah! 

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