Andrew Vanderstock is the Executive Director at OWASP (Open Worldwide Application Security Project®).

He recently introduced a four-day workweek and in this interview he shares his approach and the outcomes.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Karen: Hi, everyone. So, an extraordinary newsletter and podcast this month. So, as many of you will know, in February this year, the world's biggest four-day workweek trial ended, and the results were overwhelmingly positive. Over 60 companies in Britain, took part in the experiment and they allowed almost 3000 employees to work one day less whilst retaining the same salary. And they found that more than 9 out of 10 firms were going to carry on with the four-day week. Productivity didn't suffer from the lighter working week, and they also found that hiring increased and absenteeism dropped. Now, these results were steady across workplaces of all sorts of sizes, demonstrating that this is an innovation that works for most types of organisations.

So, as a result, I was really excited to get the opportunity to speak with Andrew Vanderstock of OWASP, who told me in a conversation recently that OWASP offers the best conditions versus the best salary. And I'll get Andrew to expand on that later. But in the first instance welcome, Andrew, and please introduce yourself and OWASP.

Andrew: G'day. My name is Andrew Vanderstock. I'm the Executive Director of OWASP. We are a web application security project, which is where the letters come from, with a focus on open source. What that means is that our materials, methods, projects and chapters are all free to participate in and do. And I actually, personally, help set some of the standards in the field, such as the OWASP Top Ten, which some of your listeners may be familiar with. OWASP itself has been around for 21 years and so we've made a huge mark on the industry. We hope to continue to do so but saying that we do it with a remarkably small staff. We only have five staff, and we support a community of well over 80,000 people who regularly interact with OWASP. And so, if any of the challenges were there, adopting a four-day work week, we would have shown that and, well, they didn't surface, so that was good.

Karen: Yes. As you just referred to, you implemented a change in the working week at OWASP. So, what prompted you to think about doing that in the first instance? 

Andrew: Basically, there was continuous pressure on me to provide wage rises and things like that, but our income as an organisation doesn't rise that easily. We haven't had a price increase in our membership since 2007 and so there's quite a lot of resistance against increasing it. And so, realistically, from our perspective, keeping an eye on the money going out was very, very important. Yet, as long as we could get the work done, I'm free to innovate.

And so, we have unlimited personal leave. We don't say that you've got to present a medical certificate if you have a day off, we don't do that. So, there is a lot of trust in our staff and during the trial we actually had, as you've noted, less absenteeism and it worked really well. The staff love it, and they all wanted to continue doing it. They had the option of not doing it if they wanted to. Most chose to do the four-day version. I chose to do the shorter five-day version just because I get so many emails. But it's been working, and it's been working well. So, from a non-profit point of view, it's a no-brainer. It should be the standard.

Karen: Excellent. Awesome. And when did you do this, Andrew?

Andrew: I attended a seminar at the beginning of last year and I read the book (The 4 Day Week) and I must admit, I wasn't totally convinced. We're a customer service organisation and the majority of our members interact with us generally over the weekend because that's when they have time. Now, realistically, from a customer service perspective, you need to be able to staff or set expectations. And so, I was a little bit cautious to start with, but when I raised it with the staff members, they were very interested in trying it and so we did it and we started on the actual trial itself, which was beginning of April last year.

The trial ran from April through September, and it had a number of surveys throughout. I was very keen on getting some hard numbers behind it because if my board felt that service levels were dropping and that we weren't achieving, I needed something to back me up. Because as much as the staff love it, we still got to get through the work and that's the key. We're still contracted to work 40 hours a week, but if you can do your work in 32 hours, good on you - you've got the day off.

 

Karen: Excellent. Yeah. And what sort of options did you explore? Was it just - you mentioned a four-day week and then you mentioned you had shorter five days - so were there any other options that you sort of explored with the employees?

Andrew: Some people in the trial, were thinking about four very long days and then four very long days off, so four on, four off. I felt that really wasn't necessary for us and as it turned out, it wasn't. But it was an option that was presented, and it could have worked. I know it works in other industries, like in oil and other places where four days on, and four days off are very normal for shift workers, but we didn't need it. And realistically, that would have rotated our staff around the week, and they might not have had very much to do on Saturday and Sunday or Monday or whatever the case may be. And there's nothing worse - it's unmotivating when there's no one else to talk to.

Karen: Yeah, absolutely. And what was the response from employees initially? Was there any sort of resistance or uncertainty at the start?

Andrew: Yeah, one of my staff members was very devious. She felt that there was no way that she could get through the work. And so, I made sure that they all understood they could take training in time management. One of the things that I felt a little bit frustrated by in terms of productivity is that you don't need to write a 1000-word email. Generally, a three- or four-word email will suffice and if it's anything longer than three or four words, maybe a meeting is in order. So having productivity goals really turned the staff around. And in fact, one of the strongest proponents for the four-day workweek is now that very same lady.

Karen: Wow, I love it when, if you like, the resistors turn around and become the advocates. It's powerful stuff. And you mentioned that productivity didn't get impacted and absenteeism decreased. What were some of the other outcomes that you found?

Andrew: Well, one of the benefits was that we had to concentrate our meetings into fewer meetings in the first part of the week because as part of the four-day work week Fridays are a no-meeting day regardless of whether you do four days and Friday off, or whether or not you do five shorter days, like me. Fridays are a no-meeting day which made people think twice about whether or not it could be just a Slack message instead of an email. Whether it could be an email rather than a meeting. And I think a lot of productivity was gained by really concentrating on how much time do I really have to do this rather than how much time should I spend on it.

Karen: It's interesting how it wasn't just five to four days. It's actually changed behaviours and practises in the course of that adoption that has been a necessity I guess, to make the experiment work.

Andrew: Yes, absolutely. Luckily, we're an information knowledge type of workplace where we're transforming customer requests and whatnot from a request, say for example, I want to start a new chapter, to starting a chapter, and while we enable that to happen, we don't do it ourselves. And so, we have invested a bit in automation so that the most common workflows that we do are now automated and take a lot less time than they used to.

Karen: Excellent. And were there any surprises? Anything that took you aback that you weren't expecting?

Andrew: When we got to the end and I suggested that we could go back to the five-day work week if we wanted, the staff did not want to go back to the five-day work week at all. They love it. I would have thought by maybe during the actual experiment, maybe it was not working out. And someone who was originally a believer may have become a non-believer by the end of it. But no, across the board everyone wanted to keep it and so I was really happy with that. I've maintained my five shorter days and my biggest challenge is to try to keep them short. I rise pretty early, and so I usually get on and start work as soon as I'm able and I finish when my other staff members finish. And so sometimes I don't manage those five shorter days, so I often take a truncated Friday in response. But, yeah, I think the biggest single surprise to me was that we did get through all the work and at the end of it, everyone wanted to keep it.

Karen: Yeah, that's awesome. And what was it that your employees loved about it?

Andrew: The flexibility. I mean, we already had flexible working hours. Like, one of our ladies has got a young daughter and she often has to go and get her and take her to various daycare-like things. We've never really been clock watchers. So, providing the flexibility, if she needs to take Thursday off, not Friday, that's fine by me. So, the flexibility was one of the main key elements that I think that can really help self-driven, motivated staff. If you have staff that you have to micro direct you've got a HR problem and not a four-day work week problem, because you're going to have problems no matter what type of scheduling you use.

Karen: Absolutely, yeah. And what advice would you give to another, maybe a small company that looks at that experiment in the UK and goes, oh yeah, they're probably all really big and whatever, and they've probably got a dedicated HR department who can sort all this out for them, etc. So, if you've got another company saying, “Andrew, I like what you're saying, I want to go about doing this four-day week”, what advice would you give them?

Andrew: Do the first step, which is to make Fridays a no-meeting day so that you set up for it. That's very easy for people to do. It means just clearing their Fridays and then setting it up so that the calendar will auto-reject meeting requests. That's the first step.

The second step is to give the staff some training. Just simply letting them know that there is some time management courses that you may want to participate in because there is a general level of disbelief that you can get through five days' worth of work in four days. And people, when they go through and do some productivity training like that, they learn that, hey, I'm probably not operating at my peak level and so I need them to be there from the time they start to the time they finish, but I want them to have a home life as well. And so, time management skills help both work and personal life.

And so, before you get going, give the staff the opportunity to not only let you know what sort of schedule they'd like to keep, whether it's going to be five shorter days or four days. Get them to generally agree on the day that it's going to be - like for us Fridays works well. Maybe for a retail organisation, Mondays may make the better choice. It's got to work for the business. It can't NOT work for the business.

Yeah. Once you've chosen the basic settings, it is as simple as just taking one extra day off. It's not hard. It's literally - give it a go for three months and see how it goes. I think you'll find it difficult to withdraw from the pilot if it goes well, but it is a major differentiator. It's sort of like if you are hunting for people at the moment if you can offer remote work and a four-day work week, you're so far ahead of everybody else for first choice that you don't have to then follow it up with an industry-leading salary. And we just can't afford those industry-leading salaries.

So, I think, honestly, the advice that I would give to people is don't look at it from the point of view of just simply taking a day off and hoping for the best. Get some planning in first. Make Friday a day off, then give training as necessary and then just say, start doing it.

Go in with eyes wide open. Make sure you're still achieving your business productivity goals. If you're not managing it, then it's not for you. If you can't automate your way out of it, if you can't hire your way out of it, then maybe it's not going to work. But for us, it worked very well.

Karen: Did you have to make any adjustments along the way during the experiment time?

Andrew: Well, we were already in the process of automating many of our major workflows just simply for consistency and customer experience reasons. But that was a great game changer for the four-day work week. A task that used to take half an hour now takes 30 seconds. That is a major game changer, and it means that the person who was doing that had a lot more time to actually spend dealing with customers one on one rather than mucking around with our technical systems instead of talking to people.

Karen: Yeah, absolutely. And you've mentioned, which I love, Andrew, about OWASP offering the best conditions versus the best salary, and you've touched on that. Can you elaborate a bit more on that philosophy, if you like?

Andrew: Yeah. So, in the United States, where we are, one of the things that differentiate is whether or not you have good health insurance. So, we do offer, like, if you want to, premium health and benefits. It does cost the employee a little bit extra. We choose to take it because of some family medical conditions, but not everybody needs to. If you're 25 and as healthy as anything, you probably want to take the cheaper option. But it's there if you want.

We also make sure that we have great parental leave. In the United States, it's really usual for the mother to go back to work after two or three days, which is just ridiculous. It's actually unbelievable from an Australian's perspective that there is so little parental leave here, so we offer good parental leave benefits. And as one of the things that actually helps retain staff, obviously that will only affect those who are likely to have kids, but it's some of the examples that we've used.

One of the other ones is unlimited personal time off. My biggest problem with unlimited personal time off is actually making staff take time. Normally in the United States, two weeks off a year is the norm. And if I find staff are not taking two weeks off, I ask them to take a little bit more time from here and there. And sometimes I help them out - I close the offices around Christmas time.

But yeah, just simply by saying to prospective employees, we're soon to be recruiting a new person for our community manager role. That is a relatively common hire, and I'm looking forward to actually seeing the range of candidates, and I'm expecting to be able to retain the best candidate because we have such good working conditions. And to me, it's a competitive advantage against all of the other organisations who are looking for community managers. Not only are we fully remote, as long as you can work in a required area, like, I've got my office door closed at the moment, we also provide you a computer and assistance with your internet and stuff like that. It's almost a perfect working environment for mums returning to work, for parents who want to have more time with their families. We don't want to have a situation where people are just working, working and then leaving the organisation. They're not replaceable in that way. It costs a small organisation like us a lot of money to replace someone who's got that organisational knowledge. It might be different in large organisations, but for us, the loss of an individual through one of them leaving, for whatever reason, it can be devastating to a small business and it can take some time to recruit correctly. 

To my mind, we've not had a single resignation since 2021 and I would normally expect one to two resignations a year. Yeah. And I think that says the proof of the pudding. If you've got the staff you want, you're going to be able to retain them because you have the best conditions.

Karen: Yeah, absolutely. I think there' is in so many, especially in the larger organisations, this big gap that I've written and talked about between employer and employee, where the employer still thinks it's all about pay and benefits. And employees, whilst those things are still important because everyone wants a decent standard of living, employees are looking for those other things now. That flexibility, that you're going to look after my well-being, that you're going to make sure that I'm supported and equipped to do the job and give me the training and the growth and the development. And regardless of what size an organisation that is so important. And that is the differentiator today. I think that's what people are looking for. And when you've got a talent market that's global, that you can employ anyone from around the world, I guess depending on legislation and those issues, if you can have that differentiator, then the world's your oyster, isn't it? Really?

Andrew: One of the people that we're looking at is lives in the EU, and they have very high salary expectations. But by offering the four-day work week to them.....

Also, this person that I'm considering is in Germany, so they automatically get six weeks off. And so, there's a customary - like if I just said, "You've only got two weeks off", they would never consider us. So, you've got to be competitive in benefits. And as a person, I've got a 15-year-old daughter. I just don't see the point in sitting in a car for 2 hours a day. It makes no sense. 

We offer all of the normal work stuff that you have to get done and you still have to get that done. We're not an easy or soft organisation in that way. We have things that we need to achieve but as long as you do so you've got a really good work-life balance. I think that's the key to avoid burnout.

Karen: Yeah, absolutely. And I think there's been some research about people who've been able to avoid going back to that commute and spending 2 hours on a packed train or subway or whatever it is, or in traffic. And they're saying they're spending that time on either sport or fitness or leisure activities or just having a bit extra time in bed, which again, is looking after their mental well-being. And that's far better use of the time than, like you say, sitting. And I say to everybody who's being told they must go back into the office at the end of the day, was it worth the commute? And I'll just leave it there. Was it worth the commute?

If it was because you all got together and it was a great celebration or a great brainstorming or innovation session, then fine, there are times when it might make sense and if it did, okay, tick the box. But if it didn't, if you just went into the office to do what you could have done at home then it's not worth it.

Andrew: But yeah, I mean the modern workplace requires modern communication techniques. I actually ask the staff to check in every morning using Slack. I don't want them to just sort of work lonely, I want them to be able to say I have work colleagues. So once every two weeks instead of having a staff meeting, we have a water cooler. We actually get the staff just to chew the fat, say hello, what did you do on the weekend? That sort of thing.

And when do you need that sort of collaboration, purposely get together, leave the office behind completely, do what we're doing. We're having a staff meeting. For two days, we're going to travel to where most of our staff live, which is from Florida. And for two days, we're not going to do work. We're going to be doing a staff meeting, an all-hands meeting. And that will allow us to do the brainstorming that's difficult to do over remote communication technologies and set us up.

But fundamentally, I think the days where managers want to see you from 8:30 until 5:30 -  if you're still thinking that way, you're not competitive in the modern employment market.

Karen: No. And I think that's one of the many reasons why so-called bosses are saying back into the office because they've still got this mentality that if I can see you, I know that you're working, and you and I know and our listeners know that is not the case. You could see me 8 hours a day at a desk but that doesn't mean I'm being productive. But they have this mentality that at least I can see you and you're there. If I can't see you, I don't know what you're doing. It's this whole productivity paranoia that's been coined by Microsoft that if I can't see you, I don't know if you've been productive.

Andrew: That’s an HR problem.

Karen: Yeah, absolutely. And I think the whole pandemic and remote working and the four-day week that we've talked about and reduced hours and days, it's like the biggest challenge organisations have been presented with than they've probably ever seen before. And I'm saying to organisations and the leadership in organisations, grasp it by the neck. It's not going to be easy. There are lots of things you're going to have to consider, and you've highlighted some of those things in this conversation, but that's no reason not to do it.

And if you don't do it, you will get left behind. You're not going to retain your talent and you're not going to attract it.

Andrew: I saw the other day in one of the business magazines, they're really worried about the commercial real estate market in the United States collapsing because people aren't returning to the office. And no one owes the commercial real estate market anything. It's like back in the day there were coopers who made barrels, there were blacksmiths who shoed horses and whatnot. No one deserves to have a living just because you do something that was once useful. Work with the times, and work with your employees. Human capital is so precious -  if you want people to really work for you and actually be their positive outlook, you don't want to have people who are surly or unhappy with their job who will then resign, especially in a small organisation like with us, we can't afford to have that sort of negative outlook.

Karen: Absolutely. And if somebody has a bad experience in an organisation, they don't keep it to themselves. They're on social media, they're telling their friends, they're telling their family that this was how the organisation treated me or these were the conditions. And we have platforms like Glassdoor where people can put up what they think about their organisation. It's there for everyone to see. And I'm going to have a look. If I'm looking at a potential organisation, what are the other employees saying about them? And it's dangerous if you let that happen, because your reputation, your brand and reputation are at stake if you're not doing the right thing by people.

Andrew: Absolutely. Yeah.

Karen: Do you have any final words of wisdom? I mean, you've said what people should consider. Any shining light to set people in the right direction.

Andrew: There is a book. There is the Four Day Work Week Global organisation. I would encourage them to get the book and read it. It does come across a little bit like a diatribe that's sort of convincing you of something you are probably already convinced of, but it does go through some of the frequently asked questions. Present it to your staff as a trial and if it goes well, it'll become permanent and so the staff are invested in it too. Just don't come to them and say, from here on in, you are working Monday through Thursday. Welcome to the new world! You've got to find out how your staff are going to work with it. I know some people who hate Mondays. Well, let them do Tuesday through Friday. Have some flexibility. So, my main thing is to get prepared for it before you launch it. Get staff buy-in. I think that's critical. And honestly, just look through some of the FAQs from the other organisations or try to meet up with some of the other organisations who've already adopted it. I think you'll find a universally positive experience.

Karen: Yeah, yeah. I think the future is very bright and I'm loving what organisations are doing. Andrew, thank you so much for joining me in this conversation. Some absolutely awesome insights and advice for people considering how to go about this, so thank you very much.

Andrew: No worries. Thank you for having me.

Karen: My pleasure.