[00:00:00] Stephen: Hello, and welcome to the Wow at Work podcast. Today. I'm talking to Elena Kerrigan, who is the MD of a company called Think Productive. They're UK and a global company that help organizations, I suppose, reimagine the way they could work with productivity tools.

[00:00:14] Think Productive talk about being able to reclaim 150 minutes a day from distraction, which is what many of us are caught open in the world of work, 60 minutes a week from unproductive meetings, 90 minutes a day by getting emails under control, and Think Productive. I've worked with many, many famous companies around the world, Aston Martin, American Express, Boots, GSK VW, which are Volkswagen and Audi uh, with courses like How to be a Productivity Ninja.

[00:00:38] So we're gonna touch a little bit on that with Elena today. But we're mostly gonna talk about how Think Productive have entered the world of the four day week, Elena. You're very, very welcome.

[00:00:47] Elaine: Hi. Hi Stephen, thanks for having me.

[00:00:49] Stephen: An absolute pleasure. So I've talked a little bit there about Think Productive, just a small little intro, but tell us a little bit more about your organization and what you guys do.

[00:00:57] Elaine: Yeah. So you mentioned Productivity Ninja. We are the people behind Productivity Ninja. Quite a lot of people have heard of the book. It's officially How to be a Productivity Ninja and it's got a bit of a cult following it's, business best seller and it basically defines what we do in terms of, we're a company based around a culture that's a little bit different. Playful, kind, around being human, not superhero and walking our talk. And yet, as you said, we go into organizations and we help them and their people of transform their relationship with work you know, to work smarter, not harder. And um, just have a healthier relationship with work. We do more than productivity, but that's what we are known for.

[00:01:42] Stephen: That's brilliant. And how do you go about that? Is it that you provide workshops to organizations? Or what way does that work?

[00:01:47] Elaine: Yeah. Mostly it's workshops. We go and do workshops and programs. So, yeah.

[00:01:51] Stephen: Brilliant. I've got the Productivity, Ninja book. I bought it. I bought it during lockdown as well. So it's brilliant. And a great read. Yes, I did. It was one of my lockdown reads. I think I saw Graham on a podcast, which is the founder of your organization, Graham Allcott.

[00:02:04] Elaine: So did you use the lockdown to get productive?

[00:02:06] Stephen: You would think Elena, you would think, but let's not go down that road. Okay. let's not go down that road.

[00:02:13] I love the fact that your organization are doing something. And you talked about talking to talk Are walking to talk and actually living by what you talk about, because you talk about how we could be more productive. Do you have any figures on what's missing in the workplace? Like what's causing us to be so unproductive?

[00:02:28] Elaine: Well, I think distraction is a big one. There's distraction coming from our technology. But also ourselves, we've got never ending to-do lists and it can get overwhelming and difficult to know where to begin. So I think having a sense of clarity and control over your actual workload and, and understanding that the work will never end, so just take a step back every week and take a look at the bigger picture and. Have a think about where the, your priorities should lie and where the high impact work is in your work. 

[00:03:02] I think a lot of people get dragged into checking their emails constantly and firefighting and, and, and, you know, the first thing they do when they log in the mornings check their emails or even first thing they do when they wake up, on their phone.

[00:03:15] I don't have email on my phone by the way. Uh, you know, So if, if you are, if the first thing you do in the morning is check your emails, then you are putting other people's priorities before your own or what you should be focusing on. So I think it's been clear around where you're spending your time and knowing yeah, how to manage and protect your attention.

[00:03:38] Stephen: I always see email as a quite a reactionary tool. Isn't it? The idea that you must reply to this straight away, it's almost like it's an iMedia. That was never with us in work before.

[00:03:47] Elaine: Yeah. And, I'm human. I will see an email and want to respond straight away, but actually by doing that, I'm also sending the message that. It's good to respond straight away. And that's not the case. You know, obviously there are urgent things and, if a client gets in touch, I will respond broadly. But yeah, it's being more mindful of how we respond and, and when we choose to process those emails, rather than just dipping in and out all day long,

[00:04:14] Stephen: and I've thought about the amount of emails that we get now, when I first started in in, in management, I remember email had pretty much just come in. You. It was the late

[00:04:23] Elaine: Yeah. I remember getting my first Yahoo account and not 

[00:04:26] Stephen: it. Yeah, but you get five or six emails possibly a week. Sometimes are very, you'd be very little cuz people communicated in different ways back then, and hadn't got fully used to the emails. And I always remember that, like on Friday evening there might be two emails in your inbox that you hadn't replied to at the most. And pretty much you probably had them sorted or you might send an email off on a Thursday or a Friday, but there'd be no panic over the weekend could be no access to it because it was a company email. So we'd no access to any other form. So when you came in on Monday, there wasn't a deluge of emails waiting for you on your desk, which there seems to be now, even if you take three or four days off. 

[00:05:00] I've heard stats that people check their emails up to 74 times a day.

[00:05:04] Elaine: Yeah. It's yeah, it is. It is a bit like that. And. You get the email you deserve. If you respond all the time and send emails, thoughtlessly, you'll get the same back. 

[00:05:14] Stephen: And you're probably CCing in too many people. So now you're, you're asking for it when, when you got all of that coming 

[00:05:19] Elaine: Yeah, exactly. 

[00:05:20] Stephen: And then I was looking at some stats around multitasking as well. Roughly 2% of the population is able to multitask.

[00:05:26] Elaine: Yeah, I don't know what you think about that, but we, we, believe that multitasking is a myth. And I do have a little exercise if we've got time later that we can do to kind of prove 

[00:05:38] Stephen: Oh, I like that idea. I like that idea because when I do workshops and facilitation, I do. Hands up who can multitask and a series of hands go up. And I tell them that it's 2% of the population that can do it and they go really? But it's true because I think when we talk about like, you know, all the interruptions, disruptions that we get in work, the notifications that come in through various different forms of communication, it's equivalent to a 10 point IQ drop, which is huge when we're being interrupted at work consistently.

[00:06:06] Elaine: I knew you would have all the stats at your fingertip. Stephen. You're much better at that than I am. But yeah, that's right.

[00:06:14] Stephen: Let us definitely come back to the multitask and exercise at the very end. But before we get to that I like to to, to delve into, to where I suppose the four day working week now is becoming quite a buzzword and it and, and in, in a good way, this is great. This is the future of the way work should be, but Think Productive, you enter this world a good few years ago.

[00:06:34] Elaine: We are, I'm truly excited that it's becoming a mainstream idea and less of a fringe movement, but yeah, we introduced it back in 2011. Over 10 and a half years ago now, so long, long time ago. There were probably one or two other companies in the world doing it and Graham Alcott, the founder of Think Productive and he's the author of how to be a productive to ninja and other great books, around that time, he was really into doing loads of extreme productivity experiments on himself. And um, he'd do stuff like work five to nine for a month instead of nine to five, and then write about it, you know, write about what he discovered and um, not checking emails for a month and just loads of very extreme stuff, not to encourage other people to do extreme stuff like that, but to get them to rethink their own productivity.

[00:07:28] But anyway, one idea that came up was the four day week and he wondered what it would be like if our team had an extra day of play, like what the impact would be. And that there were, there were studies around showing like diminishing returns on longer working hours, and I think most of those studies I think, were based around factory workers and they did find that anything above 50 hours, you'd start to see diminishing returns of output. But for knowledge work it's quite hard to get the metrics around it, but it's thought that diminishing returns start to come in much, much earlier around, you know, the 30 hour mark even and your brain is, it tires and gets used more than any other muscle or organ in your body or something. And so it needs breaks to function optimally. So yeah, we were really interested in seeing what that would look like. So we did a trial for a month. And uh, before we started the trial on the four day week, we did a daily surveys for a month for each of us to get a baseline on our productivity and our stress levels. Uh, how in control of our workloads, we felt. How tired we felt on a Monday morning, you know, stuff like that. So we did those every day and at the beginning and end of each week for a month. And then we did the same on a four day week. And yeah, basically no surprises that, everyone was happier, less stressed more productive. So twist my rubber arm. Yeah, let's do it.

[00:09:05] Stephen: Oh, fantastic. So just fill me in on how think productive actually do the four day week, cuz I know some companies do it in different formats in different ways. What, what way does it work for you guys?

[00:09:14] Elaine: Yeah. So we didn't really have any frame of reference at that time. And I would encourage all companies to do this, actually. You know your business better than anyone. So you can design it however you want. And that's what we did. We were a very small team operationally, so we didn't want our clients to be affected in any way.

[00:09:33] Uh, we actually didn't tell anyone for many years, cuz we didn't want them to think they weren't being looked after or be afraid that they weren't gonna be looked after. So yeah, we basically decided to work the same amount of hours as someone on a five day week, but in a four in four days. Uh, so we had slightly longer days and then one Friday in four that we worked so that there would always be someone covering Fridays providing client cover and inquiries, cover and stuff like that.

[00:10:05] And it's actually been really great for business continuity because anyone can step into that inquiries, logistics role. I do it when I work my one Friday a month. It's one Friday a month now we've changed it. So I step into that role and I manage the workshop logistics, I handle inquiries and it means that you've got all these different people kind of feeding back on the process, making it simpler streamlining, yeah, so it is been great in that respect. And what else?

[00:10:37] Yeah, so I, when we first started out, we actually had a team member who was quite young and he, when we did the trial, he did struggle with the slightly longer days. He struggled to focus and he preferred regular five day week. So we thought well, let's, let's offer both, and whoever wants to do a five day week does that, whoever does a four day week does that. So for many years we had this kind of hybrid model and we had another team member come on board who also wanted to work five days. She wanted to match her partner's working hours. So it suited her. But actually when it, when we ended up with everyone being on a four day week, we reviewed our model and together just decided let's just go with, let's go all in it's four days, the same hours as someone on a five day week. So nine to five 30 we do, with an hour's lunch, paid lunch. And then one Friday and month. We voted to keep that one Friday a month, cuz it's kind of like a secret overflow day. So if you've been ill during the week, during the month or you have a big deadline coming up or whatever, you know you've got that extra Friday where you've got no meetings, no one else was about, yes, you might have to cover a bit of logistics and inquiries, but tends to be quite quiet on Friday, but you've got that extra kind of secret data, just kind of, heads down into some deep work.

[00:11:58] So everyone actually voted to keep that Friday going and it helps the business keep, it keeps us sharp and all of that stuff. So that's how we do it now. And we are all on the four day week. And when we recruit now, it's all we recruit for four day weekers and that's it.

[00:12:14] Stephen: That must be a fantastic surprise for some people at the interview process that don't realize that they've just entered a company that have got the benefits of a four day week in place already. 

[00:12:22] Elaine: We don't hide it when we put the job ad out it's there and I think it, it makes it much, much easier to recruit and retain staff because people really care about flexibility, autonomy the four day weeks yeah. Brings all of those things.

[00:12:38] Stephen: And what benefits did you see personally from doing the four day? Because you've worked in the corporate world before in the five day heavy workload workspace.

[00:12:47] Elaine: I just would never go back to five days now. There's no way in totally spoil. So we do have the one Friday a month that we still work and that keeps us real. That keeps us grounded and grateful for the rest of the month that we've got three day weekends. But it's been transformational, it just means I've personally, I've got a whole day to myself.

[00:13:07] You know, when we introduced this I, I didn't have a child, now I have a daughter and she's at school on a Friday when I'm off. So I have a whole day to myself to do life admin, bit of exercise. I'm in a couple of improv troops. So I'll do a bit of improv probably. Yeah, I just have whole day to get stuff sorted all or potter around a bit. And then cuz there wasn't enough of that by the way. And then I have the whole weekend as a proper weekend. It's just amazing.

[00:13:37] And then when so you have all the obvious kind of wellbeing benefits, but then you have, there's this couple of virtuous circles really you've got the wellbeing benefits, which mean that when you come into work on a Monday, you've got that post holiday feeling of. Looking at stuff from a sense of perspective, rather than a sense of stress and overwhelm, you've had that break. You've been able to fully switch off cuz I, everyone knows what it's like to have a bank holiday or in the use of pub us or the public holiday right? And it, it feels infinitely longer to have three days off than two, doesn't it? You just have more time to really forget about work. So you come in on a Monday feeling really refreshed, energized, and depends what you've been up to, but you know, sometimes we do come in tired, but on the whole, you're just more open to opportunities, you make better decisions fewer mistakes, that kind of thing. So you have that post holiday feeling and that kind of takes you through the week, knowing that it's a short week as well.

[00:14:40] And then on the productivity side, you've got, you know that feeling before you go on holiday, when you know you vote, you've only got four days left before you fly, and it gives you that natural focus to really hone in on, okay, what do I really need to get done? What can I skip? What can wait? Who do I need to speak to? And that naturally is a natural challenge of the four day week, which is there all the time. And I would say that's the biggest revelation of it all is this impact thinking like it, it just forces you to think in terms of impact and to, it gives people permission to ask, am I really needed at this meeting? Can you help me prioritize my projects? need to go offline for two hours. Is that okay with everyone? So It just gives everyone permission to ask those kind of questions. And that is brilliant for any business, by the way. Even if you're not in a four day week, and of course. We're a productivity and wellbeing, training company. We have that culture and mindset already, but this fully, opens the door to that. It says, you know, come in, take a seat. I'm really gonna look at when is my attention at its peak during the day, and that's when I'm gonna do my complex thinking work. When am I most tired? I'll, it's just all of those brilliant questions. 

[00:15:57] Cause you're focusing on the high value, high impact work more, it's more satisfying. It's more rewarding, you just feel more engaged in your work. So that feeds into wellbeing and your engagement. It just goes round around. It's just amazing. 

[00:16:14] Stephen: oh, I love. Because even the whole idea of being um, cause one of the things that's not happening in work these days is there's not much work getting done specifically in the office. When I think of open plan offices and how difficult it is with all the distractions and all the interruptions that you have throughout the day. Like when I think about a normal day's work for so many people is you come in, you log onto whatever device. If you're working within an office space, you log onto your device or even at home. Yeah, you might even check some social media before you check your email, then you start to check email and then because the way we see email, a lot of the time is email is reactionary. So you begin to react to what you think is most important and try and send that off. And then you might end up having conversations with people about how the weekend went, where everything else went. And before you know it, you've got so many interruptions that you're not really getting any full focused work done.

[00:17:02] And I, I always talk about like the Friday afternoon, always in any workspace for the last 50 years. There's not much work done after lunchtime. Yeah, and if we can actually get rid of all of those gaps, that just those that necessary, you know, you know, spending time looking at email and reacting to stuff or going to meetings that don't make sense. Like you were talking about cut all that out. And suddenly we find we've got more time at home to do things we love and to things we enjoy.

[00:17:27] Elaine: don't get me wrong. It's not about like intensively working where you don't give yourself a break or a lunch break or anything. We take breaks. We take, I take an hour's lunch break every day and multiple tea breaks throughout the day. And that's what I encourage from the team as well, because your brain needs breaks and your body. Your body needs breaks. Like you'd stop to need to stretch and move around, and. 

[00:17:51] Uh, so, you know, I have heard of people trialing the four day week and being really draconian around how people spend their time in terms of you're not allowed on social media and you're not allowed breaks or whatever. And. Take away the water cooler moments and all of that. And actually, just relax, let trust people. You've recruited some good people. Just trust them to get on with the job. Treat them like adults and just do your job as a manager, put in the boundaries and set the expectations and, you know, track progress on projects, all of that stuff. But support your people to look after themselves, look after their brains, focus on what matters, and it's better for everyone.

[00:18:33] Stephen: I always think about yeah, here's some science you think it would be some science or whatever, but the body works in a thing called old Traian rhythms. I dunno if you've heard about before 90 minute cycles to one 20 minute cycles and after that 90 minutes or so you get sluggish because of a couple of things. One, that the lymphatic system, the waste system inside your blood vessels is trying to get rid of all that waste. So that's why you feel tired. And then your brain is trying to file away all the information that you just took in, in the last 90 minutes. And if you don't allow those processes to happen, you feel you can't concentrate, you feel tired, you feel overwhelmed. And most of the time we're fed to believe are we led to believe that we need to just work through. You can't and that's where we become unproductive.

[00:19:12] Elaine: Yeah. And it really annoys me when I, and politicians you know, they'd have you believe that most people want to sit around and watch Netflix all day. They might wanna do that the first week they ever get, you know, working from home, but that is not satisfying to, or rewarding for anyone. People want to do a good job. Like most people want to do a good job and feel like they're doing a good job. And actually a lot of people stress about fitting their five already busy days into four. You know, that's a natural fear that people have around the four day week, but there, there are ways to support your people in the transition and to give them the tools and the confidence to manage their attention and their emails and their meetings and their workflow, and just think about things differently, change their mindset and give them the tools to create space for what matters.

[00:20:03] Stephen: this comes from leadership too, as. 

[00:20:04] Elaine: can help with that by the way.

[00:20:05] Stephen: Oh, yeah, definitely. Think of, think for doctor, if you want some help with this, we'll talk 

[00:20:10] Elaine: That's and that's good for any company, all companies it's good for any business. You don't want your people to feel overwhelmed and unsatisfied with not getting stuff done, cuz it doesn't feel satisfying when you're just running around chasing a tail.

[00:20:25] Stephen: I suppose, how many time have we been in organizations? And you've seen a manifesto behind a reception area, with the values of the organization, saying that we do all of these wonderful things, but when it's, when you look beyond the curtain and you can see that the leaders in the organization are working long hours, sending emails out on a Saturday evening, expecting a reply from text messages on a Sunday, all this kind of stuff is sending a signal to everybody else on the team that, yeah, this is what we actually do. This is, and I know you guys do the opposite. 

[00:20:51] For some reason when you were talking there, it reminded me of An interview. I'd heard a, was a piece of news. I'd heard from David about David Cameron, who was the the prime minister a number of years ago. And David Cameron was in negotiations on some sort of international level, which I can't remember exactly who, but he talked about the fact that they were all night negotiations and he worked through the night on these negotiations in a conference room with these people at a meeting, but refused to go through the toilet, even though he wanted to go for For a toilet break. And he said, what I was doing was helping me focus. And I'm thinking, no, it's not. It's just your body telling you, you need to go to the bathroom. You should have gone to the bathroom. How can you focus when your body is telling you, giving you these signals, go, just go to the laboratory, sort that out, and then come back. He said, no but that's where I'm seeing with leadership. And so when we hear that from leadership from the leader of the UK at the time was saying that this is what we do. You know, This is so often so many leaders within organizations, they can talk, the talk, but they certainly don't walk it at all. And I know you guys do that really.

[00:21:48] Elaine: Yeah. You've touched on something there. You mentioned, you know, what are the pitfalls? With the freedom of the four day week comes responsibility, right? There's responsibility on both sides. So the managers are responsible for supporting their overloaded team members, like helping them find a way to transition, but also to create that trusting environment and, you know, to allow people to, here's that some people call it the martini martini culture, any time, any place anywhere? Do you remember the advert?

[00:22:20] Yeah. So like work wherever you want, however you want, just make sure the needs of the business are met and that you are communicating clearly with your colleagues, you're respecting them and it's not, impacting them if you're offline for a bit that kind of thing. But also, you're building trust through you setting the example um, making it safe for people to take that Friday off or whichever day they choose to take off, making it safe for them to do that without checking their emails, without trying to get some work in on the weekend or whatever. 

[00:22:55] The leaders need to be role modeling the four day week as well. They need to send the message that it's important that you value it. If I start sending emails every Friday, I'm basically saying to my team I'm too important and busy, I think the four day weeks lovely for you guys, but yeah, not for me. And if you care about your career, you probably need to start what I'm doing, what I'm doing and working on a Friday. I'm also sending the message, by the way, I don't trust you to get on with stuff and make decisions while I'm away. Or I'm sending the message that I'm not in control of my workload. None of these are good messages, right? So the managers they've got to role model it as well. They have to there's no way around it.

[00:23:37] Stephen: And so often we hear about CEOs like Cheryl Sandberg and others within organizations talking about the day that they have starts, usually at 4:00 AM with some sort of. They get up and they do a run or whatever, and then they had to work the office for five. And you've got about five hours of work done before nine o'clock, even though there's only four hours between five and nine. And that sends out a really poor message. And I think Cheryl Sandberg even talked about this, that she came back to work a few weeks after having her baby just approved that this is what she could do, and that message is such a poor message because in a world of where we're feeling or experiencing more burnout now than ever before that's certainly not the answer. Working less and more efficiently and effectively. It's not that you're working less, you're working more efficiently and effectively in what you do in the four day week, because one of the things that you guys do as well is it's five, five days pay it's a hundred percent pay. 

[00:24:23] Elaine: Oh yeah. A hundred percent pain, no loss in holidays. In fact, we are gaining holidays because when you go away for two weeks, you don't have to count the Friday as a holiday day. We didn't change pay or anything. Going back to that message the Cheryl Sandberg did I say her name right? 

[00:24:38] Stephen: yes. 

[00:24:38] Elaine: Here's my message. When I went on maternity leave, I took nine months off. I didn't check my emails and that was it. And that life continued. The company's still running. you know, my job was still there when I got back. I, I did feel like I did, I'll be honest. I experienced a couple of months of imposter syndrome where I kind of was trying to find my feet again, thinking what is my role here? Am I really needed? But after a while of doing the work again, I realized, okay. Yeah, I am adding value here. And I think that's quite a common challenge for a lot of mums who, who come back after maternity. But yeah, I would, yeah. I, I really appreciate those nine months and yeah, that's, it's.

[00:25:20] Stephen: I, I always think of that sam Walton quote, Sam Walton was from the company, Walmart, set up the company, Walmart to the famous company. And in the 1960s, when he passed away, I think he was worried about 25 billion at the time, which is a phenomenal amount of money back then, something phenomenal. And on his deathbed, his dying words were, I screwed it. I screwed up. And imagine getting to that stage, having made that amount of money, having worked that hard and feeling at the last stages that's, you foul it up.

[00:25:46] Cuz that brings me back to what I've spoken before about TBE Al Shahar who's the psychologist who talks about the different archetypes that we experience. And one of the archetypes that we get caught up in is what we call the rat race archetype. And so many of us are in that field. The rat regs archetype is the person that is working long hours and commuting long distance to work, putting lots of effort into their job, and what they're experiencing is present detriments. So their life is pretty, time poor, they're not having many chances to socialize outside social relationships are probably quite poor because their noses to the grind and the working really hard. So what they've got is we call what we call present detriment, and that present detriment is life feels pretty lousy at the moment, but there's gonna be a future benefit. And the future benefit is that I might get promoted or else when I get to retirement, that life is gonna be pretty sweet. And me and my partner are gonna end up going on cruises and seeing parts of the world we've never seen before.

[00:26:38] So, we give up our lives now in the hope that it's gonna be better in the future. And for so many of us, what we realize is that even when we get that promotion to become the CEO or becoming the boss or becoming whatever else we wanted to be in the organization is that we have to work nearly harder in most of those roles cuz that's what's expected. So we don't feel that future benefit. It's still future detriment. So it never ends. And then we get to retirement and we really find out that maybe we've possibly got ill health cause we've worked so hard. So the burnout has really caught up with us. The stress has really taken control of our body and, we don't have the the health to be able to do all the things we wanted to do with our partner, so we just live in this world of detriment.

[00:27:14] Where the happiness archetype is to be able to experience present benefit. So doing things at, in life. Now we enjoy at this moment in time, not feeling stressed or overwhelmed by the amount of work, feeling that we're on top of things, being able to concentrate, be able to give our best, get better sleep. That's what you talk about when you talk about the four day working week, that's what you're experiencing present benefit. You talk about the three day weekends that you have. Holidays and the less stress coming and feeling focused on a Monday, not anxious about your work at all that's present benefit. And the future benefit is that when, later in life, when you do get to retire, you haven't reached that stage where you've burnt yourself out so badly that you've got all these, health complications that are going to, cause either a shorter life are less fulfilling life.

[00:27:57] Elaine: I wanna stand up and cheer. Stephen. Thank you for that.

[00:28:01] Stephen: Yeah, but it's true. We don't do enough of this. We're constantly caught up in this idea that let's sacrifice our lives in the hope that it's gonna get better. And for most of us it doesn't get better. 

[00:28:09] Elaine: In the long run, we'll all be dead. Wasn't it. Kane? Who said that? Someone

[00:28:13] Stephen: But that's it. And if the guy who made 25 billion by creating the successful. Gets to the end of his life. And the last words he says is I screwed it. That's just Testament about, where it goes to. And we really need to be mindful of that. Brownsey are, who is the of care nurse from Australia? You've probably heard of her, the type five regrets of the dying, I think. And when she says that every single male patient said to her, I wished I'd work less. Imagine saying that at the last stage, I wished I'd work less, spent more time with the ones I loved doing the things I enjoy. It's a terrible regret when we get to last stages of life. Is that why we're here just to work and you're proving the opposite. 

[00:28:47] One of the things that you do as well, you've been helping other organizations. There's a huge initiative going on in the UK at the moment isn't around the four day week. I think there's about 70, 72 companies 

[00:28:57] Elaine: it's a massive UK trial. Yeah.

[00:28:59] Stephen: So what way is that? Were that working before, before you talk about what you do to help other organizations, do you have any idea how that's fully working across the UK?

[00:29:07] Elaine: I know it started and we're, we've been asked to be a mentor to a number of companies organizations, and what that means is. We have a chat at the start in the middle and at the end. So we are having those chats at the start at the moment as they go through their process and try and figure out how they implement it and design it and that kinda thing.

[00:29:26] And we've also because there are so many companies out there thinking about it, we've also added a little service to our website, which is free it's. Ask me anything. And you can book in 15 minutes with one of the directors that Think Productive for just to ask me anything, just ask us anything on the four day week and and we'll try and help you out.

[00:29:49] Stephen: Anything, except on a Friday, don't ask us anything friday. 

[00:29:51] Elaine: we won't be there on the front.

[00:29:54] Stephen: but I love that idea, you know, and it's like here, we're laughing about the whole idea of having Fridays off, but it's a reality for you, which is fantastic. And so many people, when I think about it, even with the whole concept of the idea of remote working, three years ago, somebody had said, listen, what's the chance of working from home? Most people would've said that's a pie in the sky idea. And for any the idea of the four day week, sounds like a pie, the sky idea, but it's not, it's a reality for you. And it's an increasing reality for many organizations.

[00:30:20] Elaine: And I think it doesn't feel so pie in the sky after what we've been through with COVID and just the working from home thing was just transformational for so many people and businesses and it just has got people reflecting on their priorities on, their relationship with work and just reevaluating all of that stuff, and what's important to them. That's why we've got the great resignation. And I think companies that are organizations not offering flexible working and are forcing their knowledge workers back into the office are really gonna struggle to recruit. I think we're seeing that already. 

[00:31:01] Stephen: Yeah, cuz I think there's a point isn't there. I know Dan price from gravity payments. I dunno if you've heard the story of Dan price from gravity payments in the us, they're a company that does for small companies. They're. Within, shops and that kind of stuff, where they take credit card payments through their machines. So gravity would've been an organization that helped with that, but Dan, who was the CEO of the organization and set it all up, they were quite profitable. He was on a million euros a year or a million dollars a year as a salary. And he read some research around the fact that after about $70,000 a year, There is no upswing in happiness from any salary after that point. So earning 170,000 a year or 250,000 a year, 1 million a year, isn't going to increase your happiness levels. But if you get to the point of where it's $70,000 a year, everybody feels an incremental, burst in happiness just from reaching that point. 

[00:31:48] So what he did was he took a pay cut. To 70,000 and brought everybody up to 70,000, which is quite incredible when he did that. Yeah. And he just said this that he's an organization that is really based on the whole idea of trust. I think he got into a spa with a couple of people, maybe even with Elon Musk about the whole idea of working remotely over the course of the the last two years. And he said, he's never gonna ask his staff to come back into the office. Is there, everything is working absolutely fine from where they are because he trusts them. 

[00:32:12] Elaine: Yeah, don't get me started on Elon Musk. Yeah, like I, I wrote an article to him. encouraging him to take a break a few years back, but I don't think he listened. I'm still waiting Elon.

[00:32:26] Stephen: When you think about what Elon is doing is he's pretty much living in he's not living, but the whole idea of the nine to five and the nine to five, isn't even something that Elon is interested in. It's more like a 16 hour day that he, count and says. You know, but that's pretty much a 19th century concept in a 21st century world, yeah. So we've moved on to, to, to a different world. I love the way the world is evolving, and I love the fact that maybe the reset that we experienced through the last two years, even though you tackled it the four day working week before anybody entered this sphere, eh, I think this is a great chance for companies to reset and to rethink. And I'd really encourage companies or directors or the board or whatever it might be to sit down and start to rethink about what they want from the world of work in the future.

[00:33:07] I know Andrew Barnes from Perpetual Guardian, who has written the book on the four day week. He's doing that as well. The four day global, I think is four day, week global organization, I think are doing a lot of really good work in this sphere. I know that in Icelands, they did four years of it with the civil service, 2,500 people went on a four day week for four years. And all the benefits that we talk about when we, you know, go down the world of trials, like less burnout, more productivity, greater focus greater creativity. And the one thing that I find always. In this day and age as a benefit, more than ever is the fact that there's, you know, 20% less cars on the road, traveling back and forth to work. 

[00:33:47] Elaine: Yeah. There's all those other benefits as well. Aren't there to society, you know, the environmental impact of one list commute a week for everyone. Yeah. For equality uh, gender equality for example, if you have everyone on four days a week, rather than a lot of the time you get women work working part-time to try and support with the childcare and that kind of thing. Yeah, so it, it helps in lots of different ways.

[00:34:11] Stephen: And even in, when it gets down to the energy costs, Within your organization, the lights off are pretty much all off on a Friday. There's less energy being used up. The fuel bill is different. So all of those things, yeah.

[00:34:22] So if I was to ask you what would the three pieces of advice you would give any company thinking of becoming a four day week organization?

[00:34:32] Elaine: I would say consult your people when you're designing it 

[00:34:36] Stephen: So you're talking about from the very start everybody's involved. Brilliant. 

[00:34:39] Elaine: Yeah. And I think, if there's uh, hybrid model there's stuff to think about there around design and looking out for. Guilt taking the Friday off if other people aren't um, you know, resentment, if people are taking Friday off or other days so that, get everyone involved in the design.

[00:34:58] I'd say support everyone through the transition, equipping them with the mindset and the strategies to transition to a fewer days, but with the same workload, like how is that gonna happen? Well, you need to give people the tools and the confidence to do that? I think that's really important. 

[00:35:16] And I think you've got to get the culture right. I think that was already there for us in terms of the trust and flexibility, autonomy, that kind of thing. I think it. It's really important to have that in place. And that, that includes all the role modeling by the leaders, cuz that builds the trust for everyone to feel like it's okay to do.

[00:35:39] Stephen: And the great thing is it seems to be able to work with big and small organizations. So I know that Andrew Barnes' company Perpetual Guardian in Auckland, cuz he spoke at our happy workplace conference about this, they had 250 staff, but he's also consulting with Unilever uh, New Zealand, which would have a possibly thousands of people working for their organization. So if they can do it on that same level, It's for anybody. 

[00:36:02] Because so many people think we can't do it because we provide this particular service. We can't do it. Cuz we need somebody here at reception five days a week, our six day a week organization. And I know one of the things that Andrew spoke about is that some people have Tuesdays off in their organization. Some people have Wednesdays and some people have Thursdays and it's just about consulting with everybody to get it right. So if people are everybody's involved, everybody will come together and come up with the right 

[00:36:27] Elaine: Exactly. We handled the move to weekends and shift work and you know, we can handle this.

[00:36:34] Stephen: I always love that. One of the, my favorite books and I always keep quoting it is Maverick by Ricardo Simler. I dunno if you've ever read it, Elena.

[00:36:41] Elaine: No, I think I've heard you talk about it.

[00:36:43] Stephen: Yeah, it is a really good book. Because his organization Samco, which are Brazilian based company when he took over the organization from his father, he began to look at ways that the organization, the factories could work differently. And factories are notoriously difficult to try and organize around working democratically or working autonomously because there's usually production schedules, there's supply levels and all this kind of just in times and all this kind of stuff that play into it. But one of the things that he was able to do was he was able to get his teams to be able to decide, like, if it was that they needed to make 300 widgets a day, we're just gonna use a figure like that, just make 300 figure widgets a day. And if that's made by quarter past, You are usually here till four o'clock, that's absolutely fine by us. If you can organize a way to be able to do that. If you start to produce 350 widgets a day, here's the problem. 

[00:37:30] The guys that work in sales have to sell more widgets. The guys that work in supplies have to find more widgets, accountancy have to, you know, work away around putting this into the accounts and everybody gets complicated and overworked and maybe we need more warehouse space to be able to hold all the widgets.

[00:37:45] So we. When we sit down and we organize exactly what we want and what we want to get from it. Just let's work to that and let the teams work autonomous disease to come up with the ideas and the answers themselves. Once we've got the guidelines, let's do it. I think you guys do that really well.

[00:37:59] Elaine: Yeah, I think there are of course challenges to service sectors, frontline, you know, health schools, retail, I think our expertise is in knowledge work people that have discretion over how they spend their days and working with information. And however, I think there is an opportunity in those other sectors as well. And, there are pubs and hairdressers already doing it and I think there's a real opportunity in terms of staff retention, churn, burnout, all of those things. You know, how much time should we be dedicating to work? I just think we should be working less all around.

[00:38:37] Stephen: I completely agree with you. And I was just thinking about that today, myself as well. I went to buy a gift for somebody last night and I thought about it was a birthday. And I said, I better buy something from the off license. It's it was just something that I thought that they might like. And I thought the off license was open till 10 o'clock in the town where I live and I went down and it's not it's closed since the pandemic, it closes at eight o'clock. And I'm thinking it's not a bad thing. It's not open until 10 o'clock. I'm sure like the amount of staff that turned up between eight and 10 didn't make a big difference and we can all acclimatize ourselves to the different hours. And the organization works. 

[00:39:09] I always thought about that. If you ever worked in retail, working in a retail store half the time, you're hoping your customer's gonna come in because you're sitting there trying to look busy and you can't look busy. You're waiting to refold something that somebody's unfolded and put it back on and going yeah. So, so a lot of our working day is filled with that. So just let's get rid of all that unnecessary stuff.

[00:39:27] Elena, I wanna say, thank you so much for being a part of our Wow at work podcast. I love the idea of the four day work week. I love the fact that you guys were pioneers in it when nobody was talking about the four day week, you guys were doing it. And I love the fact that you're advising other companies across the UK to be able to do this. If people want to get in contact with Think Productive, how do they go about that? 

[00:39:48] Elaine: Just head to our website, ThinkProductive.com and then choose your country. We've got loads of great resources on there. Free resources. We've got YouTube channel with loads of free webinars. We have free webinars every month as well, just to help people work smarter, not harder. Fill your books.

[00:40:06] Stephen: absolutely love it. Thanks so much, Elena. Thanks for being a part of today. 

[00:40:11] Elaine: Thank you.