Journey.

Follow the Focus HR team on our path to a 4 Day Week.

Focus HR has been on a journey for the past two years, working towards implementing the 4 Day Week, achieving 100% productivity, in 80% of the time, with 100% pay. It’s not about compacting 38 hours into four days.  It is about being truly efficient at what the business does so that things are done better, faster, and always with unfailing quality 

This approach has been proven to have a multitude of benefits, the biggest ones being increased (yes, increased) productivity, profitability and employee well-being.  It also increases sustainability and resilience in the business, not to mention the benefits of taking an approach to people that puts you firmly in the ‘employer of choice’ space. 

Given all of the benefits for both the business and its people, it is a no-brainer.   

That doesn’t mean it is easy though.   

And at Focus HR we have been on our own journey to implement this in our business, while making sure that we keep our focus on providing excellent service to our valued clients. 

During the last half of 2021 the Focus HR team implemented a mock trial period (a Clayton’s Free Day if you will). This meant that each of our team was taking one day out of each week to work on the business rather than in the business.  And our focus on that one day a week was to drive improvements in the systems, templates and knowledge base that we use to deliver quality, timely, and practical products and services to our clients.   

We still provided full coverage Monday to Friday with the team spreading their Clayton’s Free Day across the week.

We are so excited to say that since February 2022, each of Focus HR’s full-time team members now works a 4 Day Week. The fifth day is essentially a ‘gift day’ – it is the business’ gift to their team for being awesome and being able to complete 100% of the work in 80% of the time.

We would love to share our thoughts, processes and learnings with you. And of course we are always happy to have a chat about how it’s all working for us – and how it could work for you and your business.

Follow our journey to a 4 Day Week as we share our thoughts.

The 4 Day Week

In The 4 Day Week, entrepreneur and business innovator Andrew Barnes makes the case for the four-day week as the answer to many of the ills of the 21st-century global economy.

Barnes conducted an experiment in his own business, the New Zealand trust company Perpetual Guardian, and asked his staff to design a four-day week that would permit them to meet their existing productivity requirements on the same salary but with a 20% cut in work hours. The outcomes of this trial, which no business leader had previously attempted on these terms, were stunning. People were happier and healthier, more engaged in their personal lives, and more focused and productive in the office.

You can read more about this here

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