2.128 How to Make Flexibility Work in Your Business: The Truth About 4-Day Weeks, Hybrid & Remote Work

Flexibility is one of the most talked-about workplace trends right now — from 4-day work weeks, to working from anywhere, to hybrid being the new normal. But for small and medium-sized businesses, these trends can feel out of reach or simply too complicated to implement. 

In this episode, Karen Kirton breaks down the myths versus realities of workplace flexibility, backed by research and real-world examples. Whether you’ve been thinking about trialling a 4-day work week, allowing team members to work remotely (even overseas), or refining your hybrid model, this episode will give you practical steps to make it work — without disrupting your operations or culture. 

What you’ll learn in this episode: 

• Why the 4-day work week isn’t a magic fix (and how to trial it successfully) 
• The hidden risks of “work from anywhere” policies — and how to manage them 
• Why hybrid work only works when it’s intentionally designed 
• Three questions to ask before introducing flexible work options 
• Practical ways to reduce risk and increase engagement with flexible models 

Flexibility can work for your business — when it’s done on your terms. Tune in for a clear, practical guide to making flexibility work for your team and your bottom line. 

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Visit amplifyhr.com.au for more insights and resources.  

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Also Mentioned in This Episode: 

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-06-16/australian-companies-trialled-four-day-work-week-continue/102479770  

https://www.4dayweek.com/anz-2023-pilot-results 

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Transcript

Transcript 

 
Karen Kirton    
 
Welcome to Episode 128 and flexibility is one of the hottest workplace topics right now, and we keep getting headlines around the four day workweek, hybrid work being the new normal employees to ask from anywhere around the world. 
But there's always that challenge for small and medium sized businesses, because the ideas sound fantastic and and lots of business owners want to enable this. But it's not always clear how to make it work in practise. So in this episode, I thought it'd be good to unpack some of the myths around these. 

Flexibility trends share some of what the research says, and real world examples and more importantly, some practical steps that you can take to explore these ideas in your business. So let's start with the one that's making most of the headlines, which is the four day work week and in terms of the myth around this, the myth is that the four day workweek is a quick fix. You know, it has been headline news, and for good reason. Trials around the world, including here in Australia, show really promising results. 

And in one Australian pilot, 10 businesses trialled the what they call the 100-80-100 model, so you get 100% of your pay for 80% hours, but you still need 100% productivity and four of those companies made it permanent and 70% reported productivity gains.

 
And in early 2022, Four day Workweek Global began recruiting Australian organisations to participate in a six month pilot programme and their results showed 44% less sick leave, 64% less burnout and 96% of employees wanted to continue.

 
So this was based on a small sample size, but it's important to think about those results because the evidence is strong, but the myth is that it's not a simple swap. From today, you're working five days, tomorrow you're working four, you know, in reality it does take redesigning in terms of how the work is done. So for small and medium sized businesses you can trial the four day workweek by first starting with the pilot. Start with one team or start with a three month trial and focus on productivity, not hours. So we need to identify the tasks that we think add little value that we can cut out, we must involve the team. So they've got to be involved in how we redesign their roles and their week because we need to get buy in and we need to get those practical solutions.

 
Now the only caveat I'll put on that is that if you're going to trial something and that stat that I just gave you before was 96% of employees wanted to continue the trials that they were in and you don't continue it, then you're going to be really clear on the reasons why, which means going into the trial, you need to be really, really clear.

 
Of what the outcomes are that you're seeking and throughout the trial period actually communicate how well are we doing against those outcomes. So the four day work week can work for small and medium sized businesses, but you need to approach it as a rethink of your work and not just a calendar change.

 
Myth #2 is that working from anywhere is easy. You know, it sounds amazing. I can go to Thailand. I can go to India. I can go to the US. I can work wherever I want. And you know, for some employees, that's hugely appealing. But from an employer perspective, especially for smaller organisations, it is layered with complexity.

 
There are challenges with taxes and visas and decentralised workforce management, and even just moving across Australia can complete, can create complexity when you have employees dotted around the country because our workers comp our payroll tax, our long service leave are all state based. 
And then you start looking at employees who also then want to work overseas and you're just adding in more layers. The other component that's becoming more important, more on business owners minds, is around cybersecurity. So a recent study found that many organisations like training and systems to protect data when employees.

 
Is a spread across borders, so yeah, it's important to remember. It doesn't mean that small and medium sized businesses can't offer work from anywhere. It just means that you need clear boundaries and you need to think about how you can put this in place.

 
So if you want to try it then first thing is start with short term approvals. So offer people you know four weeks or eight weeks that they can go overseas rather than being open-ended. Have policies upfront. So set expectations on time zones, performance, the tax and legal responsibilities and also the equity with the rest of the team.

 
And start local. So you might want to just trial the work from anywhere within Australia first, because that can reduce some of those compliance headaches but still give staff flexibility and have a clear policy of when your employees need to let you know that they're working from a different location so you can make sure that you're complying with.

 
All those local laws so work from anywhere is absolutely possible for small to medium sized businesses, but you'll succeed when you start containing the risk of setting those clear guardrails.

 
Myth #3 is that hybrid will solve everything. Hybrid is often described as the perfect balance. There are a few days in the office, a few days at home, but you know it's it's not magic. And I discussed this back in episode 64 with Maya Peleka. 
Your hybrid really only works when there's connection, autonomy and equity, and research across Australia and overseas shows that there are risks around digital gaps, cybersecurity, managing fairness, but also from a legal perspective. We need to be clear on our work from home and hybrid policies because we still have obligations around.

 
Health and safety and communications and expectations on performance. So I think you know, most organisations these days understand that even if they don't really like it, hybrid is what people expect. So if we want to be able to attract and retain great people, then we need to try at least to get.

 
Our hybrid model, right, and that means trialling different things and how they work for our business and being prepared to change. So one of the things that you can do is set anchor days. So this is becoming more and more common to choose one or two office days where everybody comes in for collaboration and team culture.

 
The second is being deliberate with meetings, so designing meeting rhythm so that remote staff are actually not left out of those meetings. And we also need to remember to train our managers. So giving managers the tools to be able to manage remote workers, to manage performance and connection across locations.

 
Is really important because hybrid is one of the easiest models for a small and medium sized business to put in place to be able to attack and train, retain great people, but it succeeds only when it's designed intentionally and not left to chance.

 
So across these three flexibility trends, what's the common thread really? We need to start thinking about firstly, is it fair? So if we introduce these, is it going to create equity across our employees or will it have the opposite effect and potentially create resentment?

 
The second is, is it sustainable? You know, can we realistically deliver this into the long term? Third, doesn't support our culture and our customers because if it doesn't then it's not going to serve the business. But if our answer is yes to all three, then it's time to look at, OK, well, how do we put this in place? How do we have those policies and those?

 
Guardrails, how do we involve all of our team members in the decisions about how we're going to do this?

 
So thanks for joining me today. I hope that this has given you some ideas of what kind of flexibility you can look for in your business. And the key is to really tailor your approaches, start small pilot, design them with your team and your business in mind.

 
So I've added some links into the show notes to the research and case studies that I've mentioned, and if you'd like help designing flexible policies that actually work for your people and your business, then get in touch with us at amplifyhr.com.au. And if you've received value from this episode, I'd love it if you can leave a rating or review over at Apple or Spotify so someone else can also find the episodes to help with their business episodes released on Mondays. So click subscribe and you'll be notified of when it's available. Thanks so much for joining me if you have any feedback, questions or ideas for future episodes.

 
Head on over to amplifyhr.com.au or connect with me on LinkedIn and we can start a conversation.