On Wednesday mornings, Adam Lade wanders down to the local golf course, plays nine holes and tries to explain to the other club members why he's not working that day, but still getting paid.
"Everyone else there during the week is over 70," the 25-year-old said.
"They just scoff at the four-day week because it's like a New Age thing, like, 'You couldn't have done that in my day.'"
Adam is one of relatively few Australians taking part in a global experiment to change the century-old model of the five-day week.
Instead of clocking on Monday to Friday, he works four days and gets paid for five.
Working fewer hours for the same money may sound like it's too good to be true, but there's a chance it could become much more common.
In recent years, a growing number of companies, organisations and governments around the world have considered making the switch to shorter work-weeks. Some have even taken the plunge.
Last month, 20 companies in Australia and New Zealand joined 151 companies in three other countries (the US, UK and Ireland) in a closely monitored six-month trial of the four-day work-week.
So, are shorter weeks the future of work?
Will your next job — or maybe the one after that — be four days?
Why employers are even considering this
Kath Blackham is Adam's boss.
Her digital marketing company, Versa, was one of the first companies in Australia to trial the four-day work-week, four years ago.
The general theory is that happier, more fulfilled employees are more focused on their job when actually in the workplace.
This translates into them working more efficiently, so that they can work fewer hours but get as much done.
Adam is expected to have the same output in four 8-hour days as he would have previously managed in five. This is known as the 100:80:100 model – 100 per cent of pay for 80 per cent of the time, in exchange for a commitment to maintain 100 per cent productivity.
"We believe that we can get the same productivity out of 30 hours a week that we can out of 37.5 hours," Ms Blackham said.
"If our productivity drops and we can't make money, then obviously we're not going to be able to do the four-day week."
For Versa, she said, it was a no-brainer. It could have the same — or better — productivity but with happier employees, which meant lower turnover, and a stronger recruitment pitch.
"Rather than try and compete with [larger companies] for people, I'm just giving back my people something that is actually more valuable to them than money," she said.
Plus, employers had a duty to protect the mental health of their staff. She saw the four-day week as a kind of antidote to all the extra stresses of the modern, more connected workplace.
"We're putting phones with email in the hands of every single person so that they can be contacted 24/7 by their company, but we're not putting things in place that give them support.
"We're just kind of saying, 'Isn't that awesome that you can now work from home?'"
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Where did the idea come from?
Throughout the 20th century, economists predicted the number of hours worked would go down as productivity increased.
As it turned out, productivity increased but hours worked went up.
Then, in 2015, Iceland began a multi-year 2,500-worker trial of shorter hours for the same pay that recorded "dramatically increased" wellbeing, less burnout and no decline of productivity or service.
In 2018, Perpetual Guardian, a New Zealand company, trialled something similar, with a 32-hour, four-day schedule.
It recorded a similar improvement in employee wellbeing as the Iceland trial and made the change permanent.
Its then-managing director, Andrew Barnes, went on to found 4 Day Week Global, the not-for-profit that's organising the current global trial across 171 organisations in four countries, including Australia.
"You have to realise how big this is internationally," Mr Barnes said, speaking from the UK.
"It's a far bigger movement than is probably recognised back home [in Australia and NZ]."
Scotland and Spain are also preparing their own trials, while Belgians have the right to work a four-day week without loss of salary, and the Japanese government has recommended the same.
New Zealand and Finland's prime ministers have each proposed employers consider a four-day week.
In the US, a Democratic Party congressman has introduced legislation that would reduce the standard work-week from 40 to 32 hours.
Late last year, the UAE cut its working week to four-and-a-half days.
Why's this all happening now? COVID and the shift to remote working has spurred a major rethinking of work practices, Mr Barnes said. Companies are having to get creative to attract workers.
"There's country after country saying that in the current environment we need to rethink the way we work," he said.
"There's a global competition for talent, people are asking 'Why go over there when I have to work longer hours?'"
This also explains why governments are also considering the idea.
"It's not just competition between industries to get talent, it's now competition between countries to get talent."
In Mr Barnes' opinion, within five years most jobs will be four days a week.
Can you get five days' work done in four?
But if that momentous change is going to happen, a lot of employers would need to be convinced it's a good idea.
Hack asked the job website SEEK for data on the number of ads that mention the four-day work-week.
Over the period from January 2019, the number tripled, but from a very low base, going from 0.04 per cent of all jobs to 0.11 per cent.
Jobs that featured "flexible hours" doubled, from 2.27 per cent to 3.54 per cent.
"I hate to be a curmudgeon," said Sean Gallagher, director of Swinburne University's Centre for the New Workforce.
"I don't think it's going to happen on a widespread scale."
This was largely because many companies will struggle to maintain productivity while cutting working hours 20 per cent, he said.
"Workers will end up doing 10-hour days to get the work done."
On top of this, many jobs wouldn't be suited for compressed hours, he said. This generally included all non-office jobs that couldn't be done remotely, which accounted for most jobs.
'Our jobs are now performance art'
In Melbourne, one company is working on this productivity problem.
The Walk Agency, an integrated marketing company, is taking part in the six-month 4 Day Week Global trial.
As with the other participants, the productivity of its employees is being closely monitored by researchers based at several universities.
Co-founder Nick Cantor said that when the company experimented with 10 per cent shorter hours late last year, it found productivity decreased — perhaps unsurprisingly — 10 per cent.
This time around, they have a plan to work more efficiently, including encouraging staff to work to their "chronatype" (ie morning person, night owl, etc) and not scheduling meetings before 11am.
"We're actually bringing craft to how we attend work, and I love that as an efficiency geek," Mr Cantor said.
"The reality is our jobs are now performance art. You can't come in and just work the way you did before. Otherwise you'll be out of the pilot.
This begs the question — why not work this efficiently, but for five days a week?
"It's really quite exhausting," said Jo Edwards, the other co-founder.
"But you can do it because you know you are earning something back."
'Hard to go back' to five days
The productivity stats from The Walk Agency's trial of the four-day week — as well as other participants' — are due in 2023.
Whether or not employers go for the idea of compressed hours, there's little debate about what employees generally want.
As word trickles back from trials here and overseas, interest has been growing.
In regional NSW, Amy Smith, 24, recently asked her employer to consider switching staff to the four-day week, and received a positive response.
"Our CEO is really active in professional development and leadership courses so she's heard about it before," said Amy, who works as a designer at a not-for-profit.
"It's just healthier — you cram so much into five days and stress about it for five days when really you don't need that much pressure on yourself."
Adam from Versa agreed. The four-day week was just better, he said.
"It's massive for breaking up the monotony of the work-week," he said.
"Tuesday for me feels like a mini-Friday."
He hopes the rest of his career will be four-day weeks.
"It'd be really hard for me to go to an agency that smashes you five days a week."
