Tech for time: Rethinking our relationship to time with the 4-day week.

At Carbo, we're convinced that the 4-day week is a fantastic way of reclaiming time for a better connection to ourselves, to others and to living things. The 4-day week is therefore a tool at the service of a more ecological society and world. 

The 4-day week, in line with our ecological, feminist and social convictions.

👉 Alignment with our mission and green corporate culture 

The ecological moment we are living through is the result of our world's continuous acceleration to extract ever more natural resources for productivist purposes.

In our society, time is seen as a commodity - we constantly seek to optimize it in order to "save time", to the detriment of living beings: exploitation of people and natural resources.

The 4-day week raises the question of how much time we allow for work in our lives. As anecological company, we want to give calloborators the advantage and freedom of time. We believe that(happy) ecology means reclaiming the time we need to reconnect with ourselves, with others and with living things.

If we consider the carbon footprint, a Swedish study shows that greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced by 16% when a company reduces its working hours by 20%.

The application of this 4-day week enables us to propose an ecological model and inspire other companies to take the plunge, in line with our mission: to accelerate ecological awareness and reduce our carbon footprint now.

👉 A breath of fresh air during the week for improved employee well-being.

This breathing space in the week also has a healthy and 'ecological' effect for everyone, making them less prone to stress, fatigue and burnout. Companies that adopt this approach have reported a reduction in absenteeism and workplace accidents.

As we've seen at Carbo, our eNPS (Employee Net Promoter Score) has doubled in 2023. With an eNPS above 80!

👉A 4-day week for gender equality

Women are more likely to work a 4/5 week. If we were to apply the 4-day week to society as a whole, with a reduction in working hours and the same salary, this would also have the positive rebound effect of limiting inequalities in average salaries within companies. 

How does it work in practice?

Reducing working hours: from 35 to 32 hours

The switch to a 4-day week has led to a reduction in working hours: employees now work 32 hours, paid 35 hours.

Reducing the number of hours worked means better organization and greater prioritization, so that the time spent at work becomes more precious: work less, but work better;)

A choice between Wednesday and Friday

Each employee can choose between Wednesday off and Friday off. Carbo continues to operate on 5 working days. Teams are given the responsibility of finding the right distribution of days off for their members, so that the team can operate continuously over the 5 working days of the week.

Gradual, collective implementation

One of the key success factors for the introduction of the 4-day week was to get the teams to adopt the famous "test & learn" approach, especially the teams in close contact with prospects and customers. We therefore co-lead the project with Ségolène (Head of Sales) and Anouk (Head of People).

We monitored 2 indicators throughout the test period:

1. A social indicator to assess individual well-being.
2. A financial indicator to ensure that the 4-day week does not undermine Carbo's financial sustainability.

Our key success factors for adopting the 4-day week

• A written and asynchronous culture to limit the number of meetings.
• Work on the effectiveness of meetings: each person can challenge his/her presence at a meeting if he/she feels that his/her presence is of no value; a compulsory agenda and preliminary documents, etc...
• Attention to and respect for other people's time: arriving on time, finishing on time at meetings, giving the expected level of time for each request.
• Enter your day off in the calendar and on Slack to make it easier for others to organize.
• Clear priorities within Carbo to keep everyone focused on what has the greatest impact.

And to finish with the words of someone at Carbo: "The 4-day week, it's just great!!! 🙂

PS: And to take it a step further: "When will the 3 p.m. week come into being?" ;) We invite you to read Hadrien Klent's fascinating novel

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