March 2024
Golden Police Department Sees Productivity Spike with Switch to Four-Day Workweek
Generally speaking, American workers seem to be warming to the idea of a four-day workweek.
One recent survey, for instance, found 81% of full-time employees and job seekers supporting the notion of working four days a week, compared to the traditional five-day schedule.
Among these workers, close to 90% said they would be willing to sacrifice to make four-day schedules a reality. More than half (54%) said they would be willing to work longer hours. More than a third indicated they would be open to changing jobs or industries. Another 27% said they would come to their office or job location more frequently throughout the week, or that they would work in-person all the time if they could adopt a four-day work schedule.
There’s also some evidence that the four-day workweek concept could gain some traction in the public sector.
Consider Jefferson County, Colo., where Chief Human Resources Officer Jennifer Fairweather and her HR team have seen an increase in both job applicants and staff retention since implementing four-day schedules for some of the County’s 3,400 employees.
For example, the county has watched applications for entry-level administrative roles jump from roughly 20 to around 75 on average, Fairweather recently wrote in Public Eye, adding that she and the HR team have heard candidates tell them they applied for roles with Jefferson County because of the four-day workweek options the County offers.
Jefferson County has also reaped bottom line benefits by allowing some departments and employees to work just four days a week, according to Fairweather, who wrote that the County has saved in the range of $200,000 to $375,000 in terms of facilities costs, while reducing utilities spending by as much as $210,000, and cutting down on custodial charges by around $150,000.
The city of Golden, Colo. is the county seat of Jefferson County. The city’s police department recently experimented with a four-day workweek, and has not only realized similar financial savings, but has seen productivity tick upward as well.
Launched in July of last year, the Golden Police Department’s pilot of a four-day work schedule has improved the department’s emergency response time and saved the city $115,000 in overtime compensation, Golden City Manager Scott Vargo, recently told The Mercury News.
“There’s a greater level of engagement, because people are incentivized to get their work done in a more efficient manner,” Vargo said, adding that the police department will continue with its four-day work model—32 hours of work for 40 hours of pay—until at least July. The City could also start rolling out four-day work schedules for other departments as soon as April, The Mercury News reported.
Golden provided the publications with statistics showing that, among the 15,362 calls handled by the city’s police department in the second half of 2023, response times dropped every month compared to the previous year. Response times for Priority 1 calls dropped in four of the six months that Golden conducted the four-day workweek pilot. In December of last year, response times for Priority 1 calls dropped by more than two minutes compared to response times in December 2022.
Golden’s 54 sworn police officers (the department has a total staff of 72) already worked four-day weeks prior to the pilot program. With the new model, officers went from four 10-hour shifts to four eight-hour shifts, with no change in pay.
Putting this new schedule in place has resulted in a less-stressed Golden police force, Vargo told The Mercury News, and sees a direct connection between four eight-hour days and the productivity spikes the department has seen since launching the pilot.
“Folks are not as burned out over the course of the week,” he told The Mercury News, “or over the course of their shift.”
Golden Police Chief Joe Harvey echoed that sentiment.
“The first six months of data indicate we have people who are feeling good and are being productive,” Harvey told the paper. “The burnout is real, the grind is real.”
01 March 2024
Category
HR News Article