The 4-day workweek and work anniversaries
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by Rick Joi Rick Joi is the founder of The Workiversary Group and author of the award‑winning book, Inspiring Work Anniversaries. |
As you’re probably aware, there has been a lot of recent buzz around reduced-hour, same-pay, 4-day workweeks.
There was the recent release of the results from a pilot study in the UK run by Cambridge and Boston University that reported very positive results. In the United States, Rep. Mark Takano has introduced a bill that amends the Fair Labor Standards Act to make 32-hour workweeks the norm. There is also a Maryland bill that proposes offering tax credits for companies that convert to the 32-hour workweek.
Many people are understandably very excited about the prospect of working less and getting paid the same.
However, you might be asking yourself…
What impact does the 4-day workweek have on work anniversaries?
One thing that will come to mind for many is that with the 4-day workweek, work anniversaries are more likely to fall on a day off. While this is true, it can be readily handled the same way it’s handled at 5-day workweek organizations – just celebrate the work anniversary on the workday prior to the work anniversary.
The much thornier impact of the 4-day workweek is that when an organization reduces the workweek from 40 hours to 32 hours, then it’s going to take longer for an employee to get to their work anniversary.
By dividing 32 by 40, we find that employees are working 80% of the hours they were previously. This means that at the 12-month mark, they’re actually only 80% of the way to their work anniversary.
Another way to think about this is that a 4-day workweek employee makes it 20% closer to their work anniversary every three months instead of 25% closer:
4-day workweek = work anniversaries every 15 months
Thus, to get to the full number of hours for their work anniversary, an employee working the 32-hour workweek must work an additional three months.
That is to say, at organizations that have embraced the reduced-hours 4-day workweek, employees have work anniversaries every 15 months instead of at the legacy 12 months.
Some employees might initially find this disappointing, but after further consideration, most employees will agree that the three month work anniversary delay is a small price to pay for every Friday off!
What changes does HR need to make?
If your organization chooses to convert to a 4-day workweek, here’s what you need to do.
Vendor products, like HRIS systems, should be audited to see if they have work anniversary functionality that is not 4-day workweek aware. That is, if your HRIS system automatically announces work anniversaries but can’t be configured for 15-month work anniversaries, then the work anniversary functionality needs to be turned off.
If their legacy work anniversary functionality can’t be turned off, then you should immediately start searching for an HRIS vendor that can handle 15-month work anniversaries. Speedily replacing your HRIS system is important because you don’t want to get caught up in the controversy of supporting an anti-worker vendor that is maliciously slowing down adoption of the 4-day workweek. That’s sending mixed messages to your employees and other stakeholders about your commitment to the 4-day workweek.
In addition to your HRIS system, you may also have automated reminders set up in your calendar system or task management system that give managers a heads-up when each of their direct reports are about to celebrate a work anniversary. Fixing these is generally straightforward. You just go into where the repeating is configured and change them from occurring “every 1 year” to occurring “every 15 months”.
How do you handle the “year” that includes the transition?
At this point, perhaps it’s crossed your mind that the change to 15 months isn’t simple for any employees whose work anniversaries don’t fall exactly on the day that the organization switches from 5-day workweeks to 4-day workweeks.
The problem is that for some of the employee’s “year”, they will have worked 5-day weeks, and for some of it they will have worked 4-day weeks. So really, that anniversary should be celebrated somewhere part way between 12 months and 15 months.
But that’s really complicated math for each and every employee, and it would only be used that one year.
A better solution to this problem than doing the hard math is to fire all of your employees whose work anniversaries don’t happen to fall on the transition day.
Replacing that many employees all at once can be challenging, so the best practice is to fire them the night before the transition day and then hire them back on the morning of the transition day.
That way, you don’t lose any work, and now everyone’s start date has been reset to the day you transitioned to 4-day workweeks. All of their first work anniversaries can now be cleanly celebrated exactly 15 months after the transition.
Another side benefit is that a conspicuously large percentage of your organization will share the same work anniversary, and that day will be a gratitude-inducing reminder of that amazing moment when the organization converted to 4-day workweeks!
What if you don’t want to fire everyone?
Despite the many benefits, not every organization will want to go through the administrative hassle of firing and rehiring everyone.
Luckily, there is another solution. You can just pick a date to transition from 12-month work anniversaries to 15-month work anniversaries.
For all the work anniversaries until that date, just keep celebrating them at the 12-month mark. For all the work anniversaries after that date, convert them to the full 15 months.
Some employees will undeservingly get their work anniversaries early and others will be arbitrarily penalized, but it will all average out from the organization’s perspective.
What date should you use?
One option would be to calculate the date exactly six months after the transition, which is less simple than it sounds since not all months are the same length.
Another option is to figure out the date which will divide your employees such that half of their work anniversaries fall before the date and half fall after, which probably won’t be at the exact six month point. This can get really confusing when the half-way point falls between two employees that have the same work anniversary, and thus you need to figure out which employee made it into work the earliest on their first day, which most organizations don’t reliably track.
If this is all starting to sound really hard, don’t worry – we have a much simpler solution.
Just arbitrarily use April 1st.