When Inventium became Australia's first company to trial the four-day work week five years ago, I was bracing for the obvious disasters. Productivity nosediving? Clients hating us for not being online every Friday? Our bank account weeping?

Turns out I was worrying about the wrong things entirely.

After half a decade of our "Gift of the Fifth" (GOTF) policy, the lessons we've learnt would surprise most leaders considering a shorter work week. Here are the biggest ones:

1. The biggest risk isn't profitability or productivity. It's entitlement.

Here's what kept me awake at night: profitability, productivity, client satisfaction. Here's what actually tried to sink us: entitlement.

I was braced for unhappy clients. Instead, the real problem was the occasional team member treating Friday like a birthright, regardless of whether they'd earned it.

GOTF's premise is simple: smash your work in four days, and the fifth is yours. But some people missed this memo entirely. They'd clock off Thursday having missed deadlines or dumped work on others, then get frustrated when told Friday wasn't theirs to claim.

This entitlement mindset is bad news. It undermines the high-performance culture that makes a four-day week possible in the first place. The lesson? You must be crystal clear from day one that this isn't a blanket policy – it's a performance-based privilege.

2. Giving people a day off will expose productivity weaknesses

Think a four-day week magically boosts productivity? Think again. It's more like a productivity X-ray that shows every fracture in your organisation.

Compress five days into four, and suddenly every pointless meeting, every email that could've been a Teams message, every "quick chat" that stretches to an hour becomes painfully obvious. At Inventium, we had to completely overhaul our meetings culture and default to asynchronous communication.

The discomfort was very real, but so was the revelation: we'd been squandering time like it was going out of style. The four-day week doesn't hand you productivity gains on a silver platter – it demands you earn them.

And when I speak to clients of Inventium’s who are looking at experimenting with the four-day week, my first piece of advice is: behaviour doesn’t change on its own. You need to train your people on how to use their time more wisely (oh - and we can help with that!).

3. Clients care less about your hours than you think

I was terrified clients would be frustrated when they discovered we were MIA on Fridays.

The reality? They absolutely loved it.

Not only did clients respect our commitment to work-life balance, but several asked us to help them implement their own four-day weeks. Our "out of office" Friday became a conversation starter, not a deal breaker. Clients were more impressed by our results than concerned about our availability.

The secret sauce? Proactive communication. GOTF is now in our email signatures, our out-of-office messages are crystal clear, and clients know exactly how to reach us for genuine emergencies. Transparency builds respect, not resentment.

4. Regular resets are required

Here's something no one tells you: even the most brilliant policies can go wonky over time. Every year or two, we've needed to hit the reset button on how GOTF actually works.

Most recently, we had an honest team conversation about our Friday boundaries. What client work do we say yes to? Are we comfortable being contacted? What constitutes an actual emergency versus someone's poor planning?

We now default to saying ‘no’ to all meetings on Friday and only doing client work on this day in the case of dates or events that are unmovable. We are all comfortable with being contacted on Fridays, but we also know not to expect an instant response.

These resets aren't admissions of failure. Rather, they're essential maintenance for any innovative policy. Culture shifts, people join and leave, and what worked perfectly two years ago might need refinement today.

5. I did end up working a five-day week for most of 2024, which had a terrible impact on culture

The hardest lesson for me has been this: leadership modelling is everything.

When Inventium was struggling to hit financial targets in early 2024, I made a decision that felt responsible at the time – I started working five days a week. My leadership team followed. We weren't meeting our goals, so extra hours felt like the right call.

The cultural fallout was swift and brutal. If the founder isn't taking GOTF, why should anyone else feel comfortable doing so? The policy stayed officially in place, but the unspoken message was deafening: this is a luxury we can't afford right now.

The resentment was palpable. When you've had something brilliant for years, losing it feels like punishment rather than pragmatic business sense. It's psychology 101 – loss aversion is real, and it hurts.

6. Making it work: What gets measured gets managed

In 2025, Inventium is back on track with GOTF, but we've added something crucial: proper measurement. We track a company goal of minimum 70% weekly utilisation of the gift. If utilisation drops below 70%, we investigate. Above 70%? We celebrate.

The four-day week remains one of our most powerful recruitment and retention tools. But after five years of experimentation, I know it only works when it's treated as what it truly is: a gift, not an entitlement.

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The organisations that succeed with shorter working weeks are those brave enough to face the hard truths, not just embrace the appealing headlines. The four-day week isn't some magic productivity potion – it's a mirror that shows whether your organisation actually knows how to work.

And if you want help experimenting with a Four Day Week at your company, hit reply. I'd be happy to have a chat.

Cheers

Amantha

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