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Kirsten Taylor, Manager, Philanthropy Services at Perpetual Guardian with her son Leo on her "fifth" day of the week.

​The four-day working week experiment at Perpetual Guardian may be extended.

The wills, estates and trusts business began a six-week experiment in March by moving from five-day working weeks to four-day weeks.

There's still two weeks to go, and Perpetual Guardian founder Andrew Barnes says the experiment is likely to be extended by a further two weeks.

University of Auckland and Auckland University of Technology academics are evaluating the experiment, but Barnes has already seen enough to suggest there's a real option for staff to be told in July that four days is the new norm for their working week.

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"We are broadly about half-way though the trial, and so far, it's going very well. Like anything else, you will have some teams that are acing it, and some that are still working out the best way to do it.

"If it looks like it's good, then we will be going full-time with it from July 1, which is the deal I have done with staff," Barnes says.

The idea behind the experiment, which has drawn international media attention, is that during a normal working week, people fritter away a great deal of time at work and could do their actual work in four concentrated days, if given the chance.

"The average work day is not as productive as it might be," said Barnes.

"If you incentivise people to say 'Gosh, if I can do my work in four days, I get a day off', there's every likelihood that productivity will rise."

There's a clue in that statement to the true nature of Perpetual Guardian's four-day week. It's actually a contracted five-day week, where productive workers get a fifth day off only if they are getting through their work.

There has to be a "sanction" to prevent employees from falling into slack ways.

"Our process says your working week is five days, but if you can do your work in four, we will give you the day off," Barnes said.

"If there is no consequence for you, the net result over time is that productivity within a working day will default to type."

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Andrew Barnes, Perpetual Guardian founder, says experimenting with a four-day working week has been a major positive for the company.

A four-day working week sounds like a long weekend every weekend, but that's not how it worked out for some staff.

For some, Wednesday was the quiet day, so they ended up with a mid-week break.

Barnes said others split their hours across five days, often because they had children to drop off at school, and be home for in the evening.

Kirsten Taylor, manager for philanthropy services at Perpetual Guardian, has been getting long weekends, which means three days full-time with her 21-month-old son Leo.

It's taken a bit of getting used to, she said, as she spent her four days at work hard at it and then ploughed on with non-work tasks on the fifth, running herself a bit ragged.

Staff are reporting having more time for family, hobbies, and doing things like car and home maintenance, which they usually had to just put off when working five days a week.

Many individuals and parts of the business had to work out ways to implement the four-day working week, while keeping the doors open five days a week, said Barnes.

The experiment has resulted in systems reviews and changes all across the business, more collaboration, and lots of beneficial time-saving changes, including shorter meetings.

Even if the experiment does not see Guardian Perpetual go to a four-day working week in July, there has been no downside for the business, Barnes said.

A four-day working week may also offer a fairer go for women, and may reduce everybody's stress levels.

When senior executives are doing four-day weeks, one facet of the glass ceiling holding women back may be removed, though extra family time works well for both men and women.

"It makes it easier for women needing to balance home and work life," Barnes said. "You take away the issue of having to negotiate on the full-time/part-time question."

 - Stuff