Medibank has completed phase one of its four-day work week trial and is about to commence phase two, with the HR team feeling a lot wiser about what’s involved.

As Medibank prepares to double the number of its employees trialing the four-day work week, its HR lead says allowing teams autonomy in decision-making, rather than dictating solutions, has been a key learning from phase one.

The employer of more than 3500 is expanding the number of participants from 250 to 500 after a six-month trial showed employees are happier, healthier and more efficient working just four days.

“We’ve seen significant and sustained improvements in employee engagement, job satisfaction and the health and wellbeing of participants, while maintaining business performance,” says Kylie Bishop, Medibank’s Group Lead of People, Spaces and Sustainability.

Globally, many companies are adopting a four-day work week to increase efficiency and employee wellbeing, improve employee attraction and retention, and reduce carbon footprints. 

For Medibank, the ‘why’ is enhancing flexibility while maintaining performance.

“Burnout, increasingly common, leads to poor health, which translates to unplanned absences and high turnover,” says Bishop.

As a health company, Medibank feels an obligation to innovate when it comes to wellbeing. There was no need to convince CEOs on the merits of a four-day week; the idea came straight from the top.

“We want to unlock health, creativity and joy for our people that also benefits our customers.”

Overhauling standard workflows

The first step was a ‘cultural transformation program’ based on the 100:80:100 model, where employees receive 100 per cent of their pay for giving 100 per cent of their productivity and effort, within 80 per cent of their usual work week.

Partnering with Four Day Week Global and Macquarie University’s Business School, Medibank selected phase one participants from various business teams.

Employees earn a Friday off – known as ‘the gift’ – by meeting performance goals, not by simply compressing their work into four days. Instead, they focus on eliminating low-value tasks to maintain productivity.

While critics of the four-day work week approach worry about employees exploiting it, Bishop says that concern was “unfounded”.

“The structure demands that individuals and teams still meet their commitments. It’s simply about rethinking your way of working to achieve that.”

Teams have been forced to evaluate work processes, challenge traditional methods and identify inefficient practices.

“They came up with some amazing ideas,” says Bishop. “Teams innovated by reducing unproductive work like unnecessary meetings, double handling and duplication of reporting, and implementing efficient processes like asynchronous communication, templates and purposeful workflows.

“For example, our talent acquisition team uses Calendly to streamline interview scheduling and unlock time. They also removed reference checks from our recruitment process after reviewing data and discovering [checks] had never prevented anyone getting the job.”

Strong statistics, powerful stories

Medibank’s performance was evaluated through three measures: the OKR (objectives and key results) framework, a self-report tool and a people leader assessment. 

While the OKR framework and self-report tool indicated stable performance over six months, the people leader assessment revealed improvements in employee performance at the trial’s end.

Participants reported 4.5 per cent greater satisfaction and a 6.7 per cent increase in engagement. According to people leaders, participant performance rose 3.6 per cent.

The self-report tools showed marked improvements in overall health and wellbeing, with sleep improving by 30 per cent, frequency of unhealthy eating down 17.5 per cent and overall health increasing by 16 per cent.

There were also notable gains in psychological wellbeing and work-life balance. People felt like they could better switch off from work, were more resilient and had reduced work-to-family conflict.

“These are really significant metrics. But alongside, there were also powerful stories,” says Bishop. 

“People were spending more time with family and loved ones, more time on self-care, with many adopting new exercise habits.”

“Employees inherently understand what low-value work is, so instead of telling teams how to manage their time, it’s about creating space for teams to manage their own schedules.” – Kylie Bishop, Group Lead of People, Spaces and Sustainability, Medibank

The trial also has an immediate impact on recruitment. 

“We’ve seen increased interest in our careers site, as well as through LinkedIn and Seek. And flexibility is regularly mentioned as a key reason for people staying with Medibank, as well as wanting to work for us,” says Bishop.

Building on four-day work week lessons 

With work underway to determine which teams will join phase two, Bishop says the key lessons from phase one include accounting for the time required for teams to identify and eliminate low-value work, and the positive mindset needed to succeed. 

“We now have clearer insights on the necessary commitments to truly access ‘the gift’,” she says.

But Medibank still has lots to learn, says Bishop. She’s especially keen to understand how expanding the trial impacts overall performance, engagement and wellbeing.

Bishop is well aware that inviting more people into the experiment makes it more complex. Phase one showed that adopting new workflows was simpler within individual teams, but posed challenges enterprise-wide.

“Within teams, the experience was great and people could fully enjoy the gift day. However, broader organisational interactions – working with teams who hadn’t done the work to create capacity – often pulled them back into traditional meetings and processes.

“We aim to tackle this issue more in phase two by creating clear objectives and aligned agendas.”

The impact of the four-day work week on part-timers is another ongoing challenge Medibank is addressing. 

“Part-timers often feel they’re already navigating a compressed work week, so the trial’s push to create an additional 20 per cent capacity for ‘the gift’ is tough, which was reflected in the data,” says Bishop.

To understand how the model could better suit their needs, Medibank plans to include a greater number of part-timers in phase two, and aims to address workloads before the trial begins. 

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The power of autonomy

Creating a successful model around a four-day week relies on giving teams autonomy, as Medibank’s HR team have discovered.

“Employees inherently understand what low-value work is, so instead of telling teams how to manage their time, it’s about creating space for teams to manage their own schedules,” says Bishop.

“Part of our learning in the HR team was realising that we don’t have the answers – they do. For example, they know exactly how to handle emergencies should they appear on their ‘gift’ day.”

She believes allowing teams to decide how to manage such situations cultivates powerful autonomy.

“The individuals shape the trial themselves. We’re all learning together, and we’ll continually iterate in this space.”