We adopted the four-day week.

Rebalancing our lives

Well-being is not limited to working conditions. We believe it lies in the right balance between personal and professional life: finding a place for work, a place for our loved ones, a place for oneself.

By adding an extra hour of work per day, our free tim left for the evening is not so reduced. But we gain an entire day of freedom. Which means:

• Enjoy this day for administrative tasks, medical or personal appointments, maintaining one's home.
• When our close ones do not live nearby, visiting them earlier and so for longer periods, without feeling like we're rushing everywhere.
• Having extra time for personal projects, hobbies, personal aspirations.
• Creating a true disconnection from work and reducing stress.

Taking care of yourself: checked. As for the health of the company, some remain skeptical and fear productivity drops. Honestly, it is quite the opposite.

Healthy performance

Far from prejudices, a four-day week is incredibly productive. At Bruno, the amount of work completed has not decreased. Inspiration, essential in our creative professions, cannot occur when we are constantly buried in work. Having time to enrich ourselves outside of work but also to rest our minds allows us to come back even stronger. To be more relevant. And ultimately, more efficient.

Not to mention better efficiency, this approach can also limit absenteeism and sick leave. When we know that long-term leaves are on the rise and that many of them are related to burnout, it seems crucial to find a way to lighten employees cognitive load.

Let's be honest, the four-day work week is also a key argument for recruitment. Like our peers, it's a war for talent: in a tight market, choosing to focus on well-being and innovation attracts qualified candidates. A favorable work environment means reducing turnover. Being attentive to employees also means retaining them.

Implementing the four-day work week

Changing the way you work is not always easy. Plan, communicate, internally and with your clients. Some tips for making the smoothest transition:

• Every company is unique and must adapt. For us, to fit in an extra hour of work per day, we arrive a little earlier and leave a little later. This allows us to keep a reasonable hour for the lunch break, which is dear to our French bons vivants culture.
• Concentration over a longer period is a challenge. We do not hesitate to schedule breaks and vary tasks throughout the day.
• We think of our clients. To ensure continuous monitoring, our managers continue to work five days a week. For the rest of the team, we rotate days off: 50% on Monday, 50% on Friday.
• It is essential to anticipate as much as possible. Planning tasks, feedback, client expectations, and requests for the week allows us to inform about deadlines. We also make our clients aware of our organization, to avoid disappointment if feedback is not handled on the day off. No bad surprises.

Overall, the four-day work week is highly appreciated by the team and has rather positive impacts on our way of working. So why not give it a try?