The answer to the question how to implement a 4-day work week is lengthy. I will tackle this query in several articles; today, focusing on identifying and tracking measures of success for your organization.
If you haven't yet considered your company's readiness to to launch a condensed work week, take a look at my post about 4 factors critical to an effective program.
Align metrics with project objective
Like a treasure map, all strategic projects need a clearly marked "X" so you know where you are headed; planning a 4-day work week is no exception. The "X" represents metrics you select as indicators of program success. These success markers ensure you are engaged in a strategic endeavor (e.g., to find the treasure chest) instead of an aimless trek.
Notice in the above paragraph metrics is plural. Just like the most lucrative treasure chests, which, as everyone knows, are filled with all kinds of booty...jewels, coins, metals...your definition of success should have multiple facets. Certainly, some of your metrics will clearly link to the business challenge you are addressing (you are trying to advance the business in some capacity with your 4-day work week, right?). Other metrics may be more specific to the program objective, yet will still signal gains for the business.
Your definition of program success will be unique to your organization. No two treasure chests look the same; no two programs will have identical success metrics. What's important to your company may not be the driving factor for another. As you read through possible metrics below, keep your project objective(s) top of mind and choose metrics that support your goal.
Success metrics
Ultimately, you are looking to track and analyze 5 - 10 measures relevant to your program.
Each metric you select will be linked to 2 categories, organizational hierarchy and functionality.
In the organizational hierarchy category, there are 3 buckets:
- Corporate - a measure across the entire company
- Team - metric specific to a department/division/group
- Individual - employee-level measure
There are 3 functional levels, as well:
- Productivity - the output metric for the company, team, or individual. This could be time, money, lines of code, physical goods, etc
- Cost - an expense or saving measure, usually falls into the corporate level
- Wellbeing - metric indicating the health (e.g., engagement, burn out levels, reputation, etc) of an individual, team, or company
Below are a list of potential metrics to select as your program measures along with their specified categories.
Company metrics
High level corporate measures are probably already tracked by the Finance department. If you aren't familiar with this data, sit down with a member of your Financial Planning & Analysis team to get up to speed.
- Revenue growth - productivity measure indicating increase (or decrease) of revenue over a period of time. Helpful to compare this to the same period a year prior
- Profit margin - productivity measure for company profitability
- Revenue per employee - productivity metric which highlights how much money each employee generates
- Inventory Turnover ratio - productivity metric indicative of how efficiently a company utilizes inventory
- Overtime hours and wages - cost metric tracking spend on OT hours
- Voluntary employee turnover rate - wellbeing metric analyzing the rate that employees chose to resign from the company
- Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) - wellbeing stat to show how likely an employee is to refer a friend or relative to work at the organization
- Job offer acceptance rate - company wellbeing measure that highlights how many offers are accepted vs extended
Team metrics
Drilling down from the corporate level, metrics for each team are critical to monitor. Following are some examples for various teams, you may have other teams in your company that aren't listed here. Every team should have metrics, so don't limit yourself to this list.
- Projects completed on time - productivity metric for any team
- Leads generated - productivity metric for the marketing department
- Subscriber growth - another productivity stat for marketing
- Leads converted - productivity measure for sales
- Clients onboarded - this activity is usually a productivity measure for the customer success team
- Tickets closed - productivity metric for any team that uses a ticket inquiry system
- Average time to close ticket - again, a productivity stat for any team with a ticket system
- Average client wait time - productivity measures for IT (internal clients), reception teams, and support teams
- Customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores - a wellbeing stat for teams that measure CSAT. Burned out, stressed teams will have lower CSAT scores
- Absenteeism - another wellbeing measure for a team
- Days to complete month-end close/financial reports - a productivity stat for finance departments
Individual metrics
Each employe should have clear goals and targets (this is just good business practice and not simply related to tracking the impact of a 4-day work week). These goals should be SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time-bound). Below are some metrics to include in a 4-day work week dashboard specific to employees.
- Quota attainment - individual salesperson productivity measure
- Calls processed - productivity metric for any roles responsible for phone or in-person connections
- Bugs fixed - productivity measure for QA
- Sprint points earned - productivity for Developers or QA
- 360 feedback scores - productivity and wellbeing for any person which this data is collected
- Objectives achieved on time - productivity metric for every employee (if not all of your employees have objectives, this should be your first area of focus)
- Wellbeing survey scores - a wellbeing metric (yeah, that was obvious) based on brief employee surveys (eg, weekly survey asking "on a scale of 1 - 5, how successful were you in accomplishing all tasks this week?" or "I am feeling rested and ready to tackle the week ahead. Yes/no.")
- Projected tenure survey scores - another wellbeing score based an employee's answer to "I see myself working here in 1 year" or "I am excited about my long term career path here."
When to measure
Once you've selected 5 to 10 metrics to track, you need to analyze the data on a consistent basis.
First, you will need to gather benchmarking data prior to launching your 4-day work week. This will be the starting point from which you measure all future data. Many of these metrics you will probably already have on hand, although you may want to organize it into a dashboard. Some data, though, you will need to begin collecting ASAP to establish your baseline. Without a baseline, you are back on an aimless trek instead of a following your strategic path.
With your baseline data collected and your shortened work week launched, you should initially review data on a bi-weekly basis. Are productivity numbers holding steady? Is there an increase in OT? Analyzing this data identifies program components that need tweaking and highlights what is going well.
After 3 months of data that is stable, you can shift to a monthly review of the stats. How do sales compare to this month last year? Have there been shifts to revenue per employee that could be contributed to the 4-day week? Has our offer acceptance rate improved?
All data should then be analyzed on quarterly and annual bases, as well. Long term assessments will reveal trends not necessarily uncovered in monthly reviews. And, it goes without saying, the analysis continues for the entirety of the program. Even a program running smoothly for years should be examined regularly so adjustments can be made and complacency can be avoided.
How to implement a 4-day work week: next steps
As project planning continues, your next step is to build a detailed roadmap that guides all activities leading to program launch and beyond. Several of the activities to include in this roadmap were referenced above -- collecting baseline data for your success metrics, building a project dashboard, and launching employee surveys.
Talent Alchemists is ready to answer all of your questions on how to implement a 4-day work week. Reach out here or in the comment section below.
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