New York based company puts 4-day work week to test

Workers returned feeling rested and excited, but felt toll of longer days

Permanent three-day weekends may seem like a dream, but they’re a reality for workers at Elephant Ventures, a software and data engineering company headquartered in New York.

The company started testing a four-day workweek in August of last year to help prevent employee burnout and maintain work-life balance during the pandemic.

The plan was to try out 10-hour work days Monday through Thursday for two months.

To see what workers thought of the new schedule, the company surveyed employees about the shift before, during and at the end of the trial period.

Here is what they found: it took employees about three to four weeks to adjust, but after the first three-day weekend, workers returned feeling rested and excited. But at the end of that week they felt the toll of the longer days and the readjustment to their normal routines.

By the third week, it was more routine.

People were really starting to have adventures, planning ahead and leveraging to make use of the three-day weekend.

But, the smaller amount of days means more hours.

With so many people working from home, having families, there is leeway with time and ways to make up any missed work.

The extra day off also allows people to get personal commitments and errands done, and spend more quality time with children.

Longer workdays have also improved efficiency since projects aren’t dragged out over multiple days.

To add to it all, business appears to be booming.

The company also has grown since making the shift -- adding 13 employees since the start of the year for a total of 54 full-time employees. It even opened an office in New Zealand last week.


About the Authors:

Roslyn Jimenez is a news producer at KSAT. Before joining the team, she was a producer and video editor at KIII-TV and a radio intern in Corpus Christi. She graduated from Del Mar College with an Associate's degree in political science and liberal arts. Roslyn is family-oriented and loves spending time with her fiancé and chihuahua Paco.

Max Massey is the GMSA weekend anchor and a general assignments reporter. Max has been live at some of the biggest national stories out of Texas in recent years, including the Sutherland Springs shooting, Hurricane Harvey and the manhunt for the Austin bomber. Outside of work, Max follows politics and sports, especially Penn State, his alma mater.