Heather Kerrigan

is Governing's research specialist and events coordinator. E-mail her at hkerrigan@governing.com.

The four-day workweek trend is nothing new to federal employees, but it is definitely picking up popularity in states, cities and counties, with Utah leading the way as the first state to put most of its employees on this schedule. Reasons and methods for the four-day workweek vary from an effort to reduce energy costs (by closing the office one day per week), to bettering the work-life balance by putting employees on rotating four-day schedules (with the office open Monday through Friday). Utah started its four-day workweek to cut energy costs and has been able to reduce energy bills 13 percent. The benefits have also trickled down to employees, 82 percent of whom now say they are happy with the program."

Rex Facer, an assistant professor of public finance and management and the Warren Jones Fellow in the Romney Institute of Public Management at Brigham Young University, is conducting nationwide surveys to study the benefits and challenges of implementing a four-day workweek. Facer answered questions in a recent phone interview. Here's an edited transcript.

In the studies you've been working on, which states have you looked at?

Rex Facer

We've been looking at several places. One of the pieces we've done is a survey of 151 HR directors from across the country. In addition to that, we've been collecting surveys from employees, and we have data from employees in Idaho, Nevada, California, Arizona, Utah and Florida.

What have you been looking for in your surveys?

From the HR directors, we were trying to look at what are the benefits and drawbacks that organizations are seeing, what are the patterns of alternate work schedules, because that was one of the things that we really didn't have any idea about was how prevalent these schedules are. It appears a pretty large portion of municipalities offer a four-day workweek to employees. From the employees themselves, we're trying to find how the four-day workweek has affected them. How it has affected their perceptions of their work life, their job satisfaction, their productivity, those kinds of things, but also, how it affects the rest of their life.

When we started doing this work, we were lucky to get some media attention. And people started asking, "What do people do on their day off?" So we've started asking many of those questions: What are you doing on your day off? How has a four-day workweek impacted their exercise routines? We still don't have the data on those yet, but that will be an interesting piece to the puzzle because it will help HR managers know if they need to make adaptations to help people maintain healthy lifestyles. We also look at how the work-life balance works out. All our data so far from HR managers and from employees, at least in the state of Utah, show that employees are perceiving, with the four-day workweek, a much higher work-life balance.

Which locations have implemented four-day workweeks the best?

I'm not sure that we're ready to say who we think is doing it best. We really haven't made an assessment of that. I think the place that gets the most attention is the state of Utah. I think they've managed it reasonably well. They went into it with a pretest survey to see what the employees' attitude was beforehand. And they've been checking the employee attitude as they go on. When most areas implement four-day workweeks, they haven't collected the data to see how this impacts the organization. So, I think Utah, in many ways, is modeled to look to because of widespread implementation, but also because they've been collecting data to see if they're accomplishing what they want to accomplish.

What are some of the challenges faced by employees when they move to a four-day workweek?

Obviously, one of the challenges that we have read a lot about is childcare, but it appears that it gets sorted out pretty quickly. In the long-term survey data that we see, we were really shocked that childcare wasn't listed as a problem. What happens is it gets resolved pretty quickly because they don't have a choice. And once it is resolved, it works out reasonably well. Some other employees have noted that they are getting home so late that they're tired and it's more difficult to help with things like homework, but those really appear to have been minor problems. One of the things that interested us was when we asked HR directors for their perception on how things were going for employees, it turns out that they had a problem coming up with problems that they were seeing. That doesn't mean there won't be any problems, it just means that the challenges are much smaller in magnitude than the benefits.

Are there any persistent problems?

The problem with not exercising enough for employees is one that continues to persist because now, they're having to be at work an hour earlier and an hour later. That's tough for people. Eating healthy is a persistent challenge because you get home later, you want to make something quick. We have anecdotal stories of people saying they're eating out more often, but I don't know how that's played out with the recession. And so I think some of those kinds of issues continue to persist, and people have to learn how to adapt to them, and organizations have to figure out how to help their employees through it.

I would expect to see more employer-sponsored seminars, walking groups, and an emphasis on healthy lifestyles and wellness issues. If a location can encourage exercise, [for example] set up walking groups, that will have financial benefit to the organization in lowering their health care cost.

What are the challenges facing managers?

In places where the managers are also on a four-day workweek, same as their employees, it seems to work reasonably well, though we have heard some anecdotes about managers sneaking in to get work done on Fridays when the office is quiet. We see bigger problems when employees have rotating schedules, and in that case, it becomes really difficult for the manager, because they now have employees working five days per week, 10 hours per day, so instead of having a 40+-hour workweek, many of them now feel the stress and pressure of managing their employees during the whole workweek.

If employees are working four 10-hour days per week, does productivity decrease at some point because of the long hours?

It does appear that there is a ramp-up period that people have to get adjusted to. But it also appears that people are able to continue to be productive after they've made that adjustment, and employees overwhelmingly report that they're more productive during the four-day workweek. There are studies that show that people working longer shifts don't make as many mistakes on those shorter shifts. It could be that people get into a rhythm. We don't understand why it is that people are more productive. We understand why they're more productive in public works because they aren't having to shut down and start up machines every day, so you're able to do more productive work. They might have a job that normally takes a day and a half, because you shut down your machine Wednesday night and start up Thursday morning, but now you might be able to get something done in 10 hours that would have otherwise taken 12 because of shut-down and start-up times.

What is the best tip you've collected so far?

I think our best tips are: First, know what it is that you're trying to accomplish. The second is: Be willing to have some flexibility and focus on the impacts on your people. If you understand your purpose and work with your people, you're going to be successful. If you understand why you're doing it, it's going to work out far better in the long run.

This column first appeared as the September 16, 2009 Public Workforce e-newsletter. To subscribe to the monthly Public Workforce e-newsletter, click here.