These Small Businesses Adopted 4-Day Workweeks. Here’s What They Learned

Founders say productivity rose and burnout dropped.

BY ROY CANIVEL, EDITORIAL FELLOW @ROYCANIVEL_JRN

While lawmakers and academic experts debate the pros and cons of a four-day workweek, many small businesses have already made the leap without cutting pay – and they say they’re not going back. They are finding that a better work-life balance is good for business.

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Business owners have found it also helps to stress that having more time for yourself does not mean work is unimportant. “I was nervous that my clients would feel like that means they’re not getting the attention that they need,” says Ricki Weisberg, founder and CEO of Bird Hill PR, an Ardmore, Pennsylvania-based agency for non-profit organizations which started having a 4-day work week in 2022. 

But she said her clients, some of whom are in disaster relief operations, were supportive of the change. If there’s a crisis, for example, she reminded them that the agency would still be on call, even on a Friday. “So there’s an earthquake, there’s a tornado – all these types of things will bring us back into work on a Friday,” she says. In the end, she said the new work week gave her team – all mothers – the space they needed, or in her case, the ” space to be a person, a mother, and a business owner.”

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