It’s been some 22 months since human resources firm RH Expert , enough time for CEO  to have gained some perspective on the policy.

The concept: a maximum of 9 hours a day over four days

It’s neither a 32-hour week (four eight-hour days, with Flibco) nor a condensing of the traditional 40-hour week into four days (i.e. four ten-hour days, as has been proposed in Belgium). RH Expert’s four-day week falls somewhere in between. The firm’s 33 employees have four days a week to achieve a set of objectives, but they must not exceed nine hours a day. That’s a maximum of 36 hours a week. In reality, employees work between 32 and 36 hours a week.

The change to this system did not come with a reduction in pay.

There are more details: each employee can choose their weekly day off per quarter, but it can’t be Tuesday or Thursday. As these two days are the least popular, RH Expert uses them for meetings and training. If an employee has not met their target in four days but has already worked 36 hours, the final four hours--not worked--will be carried over into the next quarter’s schedule, meaning there will be a week where they work four and a half days.

And if there is a public holiday during the week, the week is not reduced to three days. The public holiday “replaces” the extra day off. By the same token, “one week’s paid holiday corresponds to five days, not four,” explains Chapelle.

How much does this cost the company?

“85% of the work that used to be done is now done in a four-day week,” calculates Chapelle. This represents a 15% reduction in payroll costs. “Under indirect costs, the preparation of quarterly schedules--and the validation of the weekly objectives--takes more time.”

What’s in it for the employees?

This approach, says the CEO, “allows us to ask the right questions and to know what work is expected. We have therefore improved communication between managers and their teams.” Absenteeism has fallen “considerably,” he adds, especially short-term absences. Recruitment has also been facilitated, he says, though it hasn’t been possible to calculate to what extent.

And the results?

Chapelle describes the results as “very satisfactory.” “It’s not easy to introduce a four-day week. But given ever-increasing commuting times, the need to reconcile personal aspirations with career plans, and the changed relationship with work, I’m convinced that we need to rethink the way things are organised.”

Other measures to improve wellbeing

In addition to the four-day week, employees have flexible working hours: they can start anytime between 6:30am and 10am and finish between 5pm and 8:30pm.

This article in Paperjam. It has been translated and edited for Delano.