Civo shifted its workforce to a four-day working week and while it hasn’t changed productivity much at the cloud biz, it has helped attract “new talent” and retain existing staff, CEO Mark Boost says.
While Microsoft and Dell would prefer to keep quiet about work-life balance programs embarked upon during 2019 and 2022 respectively, others in the tech industry – albeit of a different scale – are embracing change.
“We piloted the four-day week in 2020 and after a successful pilot, which included gathering feedback from our staff, we decided to implement it in January 2021, so we’re now four years on from adopting full time,” he tells The Register.
“During our original pilot we saw no decline in productivity (I wouldn’t say we had any gain). However, the feedback was super positive and staff liked the extra day off and felt they had a much better work-life balance.
“Every employee is on a four-day week and most employees opted for Fridays off, which gives them a three-day weekend and I know many employees have said it allows them an opportunity on a Friday to catch-up on personal tasks/admin, allowing them more freedom on Saturday/Sunday.”
Brit consultancy 4 Day Week Foundation last month launched a campaign to get more local tech businesses to adopt new working styles. It is starting trials for the latest batch of entrants from the end of June.
Is this out of sync with an industry better known for pushing people hard to work long hours? Google co-founder Sergey Brin recently said he wanted AI engineers in the office at least five days a week, working 60-plus hour weeks.
“It’s also been great for us to attract new talent and has helped us retain talent. We didn’t need a restructure at all, but in certain roles we need coverage on Fridays and often weekends too (e.g. customer support), so we have to flex time and ensure we have enough rotation to ensure we have enough coverage,” says Boost.
Everyone at Civo does their full week’s hours during the four days. While it may be good for the staff, is it a headache for management?
“The four-day week does present some challenges across certain departments, e.g. sales and customer support where we need coverage beyond four days, but we’ve been able to work around this by hiring extra people to improve our coverage.”
Despite its reluctance to talk to The Reg about why it hasn’t expanded its own initiative, Microsoft said in 2019 that its trial of a four-day week in Japan made for happier staff, more efficient meetings, and a 40 percent increased productivity rate.
“Work a short time, rest well, and learn a lot,” Microsoft Japan president and CEO Takuya Hirano said at the time. “I want employees to think about and experience how they can achieve the same results with 20 percent less working time.”
The added bonus was also lower operating costs in terms of electricity and printed pages. In these times of Microsoft spending big on AI datacenters, eking out efficiencies make more sense. We previously asked Microsoft why it hasn’t rolled out the scheme to more offices across the world.
A spokesperson told us they’d look into our inquiry and “let you know if we have anything to add.” Since then? Crickets.
Dell is the same. Staff seemingly loved the four-day week but it didn’t expand beyond tests in the Netherlands and Argentina. Dell didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Maybe it’s investor anxiety. Or maybe tech’s billionaire class still prefers the go-hard-or-go-home ethos.
Source – https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/10/4_day_week_productivity/