So

I say that because it really just opened up our eyes to a new way that we could really intentionally set up our life and our lifestyle.

around the things that were most important to us, which we came to learn one of them that was huge was walkability and having proximity.

So we actually just moved at the end of May back to, to New York because we have our second kiddo on the way, a son and literally like less than two weeks at this point.

So we're in the final stretch and, um, I say that because the place that we chose to move to in this area is exactly that.

We are right off of Main Street here.

You can go two seconds down the road walking, shops, restaurants, cafes, playground, green space, old school movie theater.

So

Is the current mood going a little bit against that? Or do you still see people being interested in this topic despite what seems to be a little bit of a backlash?

I think you're right in that we are seeing a kind of continual growth in organizations doing this from a low base.

There are definitely more new companies adopting this today than was the case pre-COVID.

But the pace of that growth has fallen off versus where it was between 2021 and 2021.

And I do think you're right.

I think the labor market's changed.

There's a lot of uncertainty in the economy.

So what has to change in the design of the work for the four-week work week to be effective?

Yeah.

But there is no question that for a lot of people, the four-day work week is kind of buried under the rubble of unnecessary meetings, you know, ineffective, uh, collaboration, digital distraction, and that actually once you start to address some of these fundamental issues, you find that actually delivering the same in, in less time is, is, is perfectly achievable.

And, and I think the other thing that, that, you know, i- is, is really important when we think about this, when we think about the psychological side of this, the kinda, the incentive, the alignment, some of these concepts that we, we've talked about.

One of the things we cover in the book is this, this idea of performance punishment, which is the fact that in, in many organizations, the person that is the first person in the queue to adopt new tools like AI, the person that is always trying to find new and better ways to do their jobs to become more efficient, usually that same person is the most likely person for more tasks and for more work to be loaded onto their plate, which is, is clearly a broken incentive structure.

And so a lot of what we're talking about with the shorter work week is about flipping that on its head and saying, "Actually, if you engage in ways to adopt new technologies, find ways to, to make yourself and the, and the organization more productive, you share in that benefit through this, this, this really powerful reward." And I think that that is so critical today in a world where, you know, here in the United States and Canada, I think it's probably a pretty similar story in Europe, for every one employee that is more excited than concerned about AI, there are five who are more concerned than excited.

And, and you know, a lot of this traces back to just over a year ago, we had the, the horsemen of the jobpocalypse, as I call them, Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, and these guys saying, you know, AI is, is effectively going to wipe out most white collar jobs.

Is, is there a correlation between AI and a four-day workweek? Meaning, does the time pressure of working fewer days actually force smarter tool adoption? Is there a correlation? Is it a coincidence? Um, can, can then therefore the four-day workweek be used as, uh, a business strategy for smarter AI adoption?

I, I absolutely think that, you know, it, it is a forcing function.

And, you know, when I was looking at your work and reading the book, one of the things I kept thinking about is Yes, over time, tools have provided leverage, so people have gotten more efficient, right? And so when we think about these big movements like the Industrial Revolution, that's where we get this very arbitrary 40-hour workweek that we're stuck with now anyways, right? Is that right?

It is.

So, you know, we effectively, a lot of people kind of Think of the five day work week as if it's something that, you know, was passed down from ancient texts or religious wisdom.

Because we've never known anything different, you know, unless some of your listeners have invented a cure for aging that I don't know about.

You know, most of us, we've only ever lived through the five day work week.

It's a relatively recent invention.

It was designed 150 years ago.

And can you tell us a little bit about your work and how you think about those things and take the ideas you were just describing and start to help CEOs and leaders inside of organizations and teams really rethink and reorganize themselves?

Yeah.

They wanted to be in a family's home.

They wanted to also to be able to connect with the host and build a relationship and build trust before they're like, yeah, this is the best place for us.

Let's book this.

So we're hearing all of these things and it was so often that eventually we got to the point where we're like, Do we want to try to solve this problem? Yeah.

How would we do it? And that's when GFHR was born.

So I guess a little bit about it.

yeah

So tell me a little more about how it works.

Yeah, to first touch on the point you just said, there's a fear for many families.

A lot of the homes that they have, it's their primary residence.

This is their family home.

So to turn around and just give the keys to anybody, there is a fear there that they're gonna trash their homes or something's gonna happen and they're not gonna let them know We've recognized and learned just a lot of other fears and problems that families have in this world, which has pushed us even more to want to get GSHR going and to help families in this space.

To share a little bit more about what it is, GSHR is an invite-only home rental collection and community specifically designed for traveling families.

So homes on the platform, they're listed at cost to cover family's expenses, not to make a profit.

Fill me in on what other individuals could be potential participants.

Can you just speak to that like Anita and how accountants thought they were going to be doing all the business but actually it's quite the opposite what happens in the accountancy sector.

Yeah.

So we talked about how accountants, when the calculator was invented, because the profession was regarded as the kind of bean counter role, where it was a very administrative type of function that was being performed.

And so once the calculator came in, there was a lot of assumption out there that that would effectively replace the job.

Instead, what happened was the role of the accountant became elevated to financial advisor financial analyst it was much more the higher value kind of you know role that they were performing and therefore what we've seen over the years is that actually the chief financial officer has become in many ways the most important role in the company maybe outside of the ceo and most of you know certainly in the united states the kind of most common through line to becoming a ceo comes through the finance field in a way that just simply wasn't the case um 30 or 40 years ago And I think the really interesting comparison with that and how it's relevant to the shorter work week, let's think about knowledge workers.

So I'm a knowledge worker because I get paid based on the perceived value of the information that I hold, the expertise that I have, the experience that I have, you know.

You're probably the same yourself, William, you know, hosting a podcast.

So that's something else that's going to help us keep people in the office, isn't it, or at work is the four day work week, isn't it?

Visit www.humanico.co. That's H-U-M-A-N-I-C-O.co forward slash live and work more human.

I think the benefits that we've seen can really be categorized under three main headings.

The first is that organization's who successfully managed to adopt a shorter work week, have a very unique value proposition in the current market.

This is something that in most industries, while it is not nearly as niche as it was pre-COVID, this is still something that can really set you apart when it comes to recruiting and retaining top talent.

And we have many stories in the book, including one from a technology company called Sensi Labs, who really talk about the fact that they are competing with companies like Meta and Amazon and Google for product engineers and software development talent, and they just simply can't compete on the same terms.

They cannot compete when it comes to paying top dollar salaries.

They can't compete when it comes to the strength of their brand name.

So do we just chop off Fridays? What do we do? How do we approach going to a four-day week?

Um, what is that, what is that attributed to? Like, do we get a sense as to why it hasn't been able to get any larger? Is it a, a case that where it's located makes it tricky to attract people? Or, or are there, are, are there, are there other, other reasons that, um, it has kinda stuck at a few hundred people?

Well, there's, uh, a couple factors.

Now, the first would be, and this was the head-scratcher that kind of inspired the story to begin with when I was looking at, uh, what to write.

I was like, "Wow, why does this tiny town that's so central to the oil industry, why is it so tiny?" And part of the reason is, is while there's this massive, massive storage hub there, we're talking like a hun- uh, 100 tanks.

Each one holds about 250,000 or more barrels of oil.

Then there's, uh, stor- storage underground.

So there's just a ton of black gold right there, right? And, uh, so there must be tons of people, I thought.

Can you think of another community like this elsewhere that, uh, you know, is, is such a hub for oil activity, for, um, being such a key component of an industry like this? Is there a comparable elsewhere?

when and if we move to a four-day working week?

Yeah, I think that cuts to the heart of what this conversation is really all about, and it's our view that we have this broken incentive structure within modern work.

And so if we think about the person who is always the first in the queue to adopt new tools, new ways of working, they're always finding new and different ways to become more efficient in their jobs, you know, integrating, um, innovations in how they work, that actually frees up time and space.

Typically, the, the only reward that they get is this performance punishment, where more tasks and more workload is actually loaded onto their plate.

On the reverse of that, we have this, as you call it, pseudo-work, or, you know, you can also describe it as performative busyness or productivity theater, where we are rewarding activity and responsiveness and availability more than achievement, results, and impact.

And so one of the data points that we draw on in the book from Atlassian found that sixty-five percent of knowledge workers think that it's more important to respond quickly to a message than it is to make progress on their top priorities, which really we, we thought was, was quite startling and shows you how we have kind of culturally hardwired this phenomenon into, into modern work.

Um, another study found the existence of a detachment paradox, where managers recognized that it was good in the long run for their employees' ability to actually perform at a high level and to sustain that performance if they were able to detach from work, if they were able to put up boundaries and have quality time away, um, from, from work.

What's the sort of data points that, that companies that, you know, pilot the four-day week or move to a four day, what, what are some of the, the data points that they're looking at to just to guide them that they're in, they're moving in the r- they've moved in the right direction?