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For the last 12 months, it has been the workplace trend on everyone’s lips, billed as a panacea for burnout with untold capacity to unlock heightened workplace productivity. But does the four-day work week have a home in real estate?
A survey published by recruitment outfit Robert Walters during the middle of the year found almost 90 per cent of its 2,000 respondents were crying out for a four-day working week, with just under half (46 per cent) prepared to forego workplace socialisation and colleague relationships to achieve this dream.
Such employee desires for shortened work weeks come as the society increasingly emphasises work-life balance and mental wellbeing, with trials right across the globe, including in Belgium where workers are given the choice between four 9.5-hour days as opposed to the traditional 40-hour working week, producing glowing reviews of the revolutionised working hours.
On home soil, a recently conducted Senate committee inquiry recommended a national trial of a four-day working week.
And in a small, serene pocket of the nation’s largest state by land mass, Western Australia, the global trend has reached its way into the real estate world. First National Bairstow Kerr based in Albany, headed up by principal and licensee David Kerr, recently introduced a shorter working week – just not to all staff.
When he acquired the business a few months ago from his mother, a transition born out of the successful implementation of a succession plan, Mr Kerr outlined a major goal of his was to “create a great team [and] create a great workplace environment”.
Key to achieving his goals was the implementation of a four-day working week for the office’s administrative and property management staff.
He described the shift’s impact as “awesome,” revealing that “if someone has a Monday off, they come to work Tuesday, and they’re full of energy”.
The scheme, which allows for his office’s property managers to either “knock off early one day” or miss an entire day of work completely, has boosted workplace output.
“They’re just more productive because they know that they’re there for less time,” he proclaimed, adding that employees’ time management skills have improved with shorter work weeks.
His findings coincide with those of other businesses, according to a report on REB’s sister brand, HR Leader. The shift to a newer working week structure, which isn’t exclusive to First National Bairstow Kerr and includes other prominent Australian businesses such as Bunnings, has boosted productivity, explained HR advisory director at Gartner, Robin Boomer.
“Gartner shows there is a clear link between flexibility and productivity. When employees have flexible options, they are happier, and their organisation is 3.8 times more likely to be high-performing,” Mr Boomer said.
He detailed the findings of a 2022 four-day working trial in the United Kingdom that saw 60 companies implement reduced work hours, whether through a coordinated extra day off or other means, which found talent retention improving by 57 per cent, while on average revenue increased 1.4 per cent.
Mr Boomer described these results as “promising”, given their indication that “worker stress decreased, and most employees found it easier to balance work and personal commitments”.
At First National Bairstow Kerr, Mr Kerr painted a picture of how the four-day work week’s introduction shifted the respective teams’ attitudes.
“Previous [to owning] the business there was an attitude of ‘Oh, we’re too busy’ or ‘We’re always busy.’ Whereas now that we’ve gone to the four-day work week or an early knock off, it’s like we’ve become a bit more structured with how we do certain jobs,” he explained.
“And it’s not just ‘Oh someone’s called, I better answer this’ or ‘I’ve got an email, I better action that.’ It’s just having better time management skills,” Mr Kerr said, adding this newfound system allows “everyone to be more productive in that time”.
For a property management team caring for a rent roll of approximately 300 properties, the shift has been momentous, especially at a time when Australia and Albany’s rental market has gone gangbusters, with the region’s vacancy rate hovering at 0.8 per cent in August according to the Real Estate Institute of Western Australia.
In managing workload in this environment, Mr Kerr said the team’s checks and procedures, including making everything online and cloud-based, ensure “nothing gets missed and everyone works extremely time effectively”.
It’s not the first time that a four-day work week has been contemplated in the real estate space.
Several years ago, Agents’Agency (then Eview Group) owner and director Maria Findikakis spoke to Sadhana Smiles and Grace Ormsby about why property management should not be considered as a nine-to-five office job.
She had professed that “the sky is the limit” when it comes to workplace flexibility.
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