Switching to a 4-day week - the example of Laurent de la Clergerie
Laurent de la Clergerie is the boss of a high-tech and hardware company in Lyon, with over 1,000 employees. Over the past two years, he's been in the news a lot, because he dared to switch to a 4-day week in his company. A success story! Are you a manager or HR professional? Discover how Laurent went from reflection to action, to improve the well-being of his employees by switching to a 4-day week.
Where did you get the idea of going from 5 to 4 working days?
5 years ago, we were on the stock market, and I announced that in 5 years' time we'd be doing a billion in sales. Then I went back on that decision and told my teams: "I made a mistake." I announced that we would double our sales, but that wasn't my priority. My priority was to improve their well-being. And it's because my teams will feel good that the figures will be good, rather than the other way round. So sales were not the objective. So I set about finding out what I could do to improve the well-being of my teams.
How did this work subsequently take shape?
For example, I eliminated commissions for sales people. They asked me what their objectives were. I told them: "You no longer have any objectives. Since you work for the company and we all have the same objective, the goal is to go as far as possible." The wish was that we work for the company on the one hand and for our well-being on the other, and I didn't want there to be any pressure linked to targets to achieve. In the discussion with the sales team, I drew a comparison with video games, telling them "if you give it your best shot, I know the numbers will go up, because as the game goes on you'll get better and better." With regard to the 4-day week, the idea came to me when I read an article in which Microsoft had tested this new organization in Japan. The company got a lot of positive things out of it, but didn't want to repeat the experiment. When I saw this, I wondered what would be the consequences of working in 4 days at LDLC. So I ran a simulation with my company.
How did the simulation work?
I imagined that everyone passed in 4 days. If we kept the same number of hours, we'd go to 9 hours. That was too much, so I opted for 8 hours. I didn't touch the salary, as it wouldn't have worked. From there, I wondered about the cost. Giving up 9% of working hours meant recruiting new people to compensate. In calculating the cost, I included the hardest jobs where the work rate could not be changed. The 9% of hours were therefore lost. Then there were the time-attendance jobs, such as customer relations, which depend on opening times. I couldn't compensate for them. And finally, there were the office jobs. Since offices have the highest salaries, I figured it would cost me at worst 5% of the payroll in recruitment to make up for the lost hours. So I thought I'd pay up and see.
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How was the 4-day announcement received by employees?
I waited until the annual negotiations to talk about it. Nobody knew about it except my brother, who is the company's General Manager and CFO. We communicated it after the announcement of the wage increase we had maintained. I then asked the employees if they agreed to work a 4-day, 32-hour week. Then there were two main questions: What would be the impact on wages? How long would the test last? I replied that it wasn't a test, but a final decision. I knew how much it would cost me at worst, and as for the rest, I told myself I'd have to wait and see.
What fears did employees express?
"I can't do my job in 5 days, so the 4-day week doesn't apply to me." To which I replied that we'd have to test it out, and if it didn't work, we'd have to learn to delegate.
"How are we going to make schedules in 4 days?" Finally, the teams realized as they made them that they could do it without a problem. Each team was responsible for its own schedule;
And the third fear was managerial:"if I'm away, every week, the day I'm not here, my team isn't going to do anything." It was just a problem of trust in the teams. And besides, I told them"when you're on vacation, they work, don't worry."
Laurent De la Clergerie jumped at the idea of 4 days, and the teams followed suit. How was the organization rethought? What were the positive and negative impacts of this change? How did investors react? To find out more about the introduction of the 4-day week and tips on how to apply it, you can continue reading this article.