Ross Wainwright, CEO of Alida, said the software company implemented four-day work weeks for its 500 employees in early June, and the two-month trial period ends this week.
Company officials said the decision to shorten the work week stemmed from employee feedback and was due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The early results are fantastic,” Wainwright told CP24 Wednesday.  “Employees are clearly happier and more balanced.”
Wainwright said the company did not cut wages to achieve the four-day work week, where everyone has days off.
“This is about better balance for our employees and helping them invest in their mental health,” he said
Wainwright said the most “unexpected” result of the trial was how empowered his employees said they felt knowing the company trusted them to get the job done on a reduced schedule.
“We’ve enabled employees to do the work on their own schedule,” he said.  “It’s the power of trust that really motivated employees… The day you trust your employees is the day you hire them, and that trust has gone a long way.”
Wainwright said the company will take the next six weeks to review the results of the test and hopes to make four-day work weeks a permanent part of the company’s benefits package.
He said the test also has a “huge impact” on employee retention at a time when companies are struggling with labor shortages.
“Without a doubt, I would encourage companies to experiment,” he said.  “We looked at eight Fridays. It wasn’t a huge commitment… It was just the right thing to do.”
Meanwhile, the world’s biggest four-day working week experiment is nearing halfway in the UK.  Organizers behind it say there have been significant improvements in people’s wellbeing.
The trial, which is being conducted through partnerships between 4 Day Week Global and researchers at Cambridge, Boston College and the University of Oxford, involves around 3,300 workers at 70 different companies.
Participating businesses, while working only 80 percent of their usual hours, see no changes in compensation or productivity.
“Anecdotally, companies suggest that there has been an overwhelmingly positive experience with revenue and productivity levels, [that have] either maintained or, in some cases, improved,” Charlotte Lockhart, CEO and founder of 4 Day Week Global, a nonprofit working to advocate for the adoption of a four-day work week starting in 2018, told BNN Bloomberg in an interview video earlier this month.
The trial began in June and will continue until November.
With files from BNN Bloomberg’s Daniel Johnson.