Driving Efficiency and making the most of your time in a four- day workweek with David Whitesock of Commonly Well

Imagine a workplace where the four-day workweek is the norm. Would it lead to increased productivity and better work-life balance? In our latest episode, we sit down with David, a pioneer in designing healthier and more efficient workplaces, to discuss his recent introduction of a four-day workweek at his firm, Commonly Well. He enlightens us with the rationale and science behind this strategic decision, aiming to enhance productivity by maximizing focus and curbing time wastage. 

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:04

you, you, you. Welcome to hatching creativity. This isn't just another behavioral health podcast. This is the place where thought leaders converge to talk about real life challenges, breakthroughs and pivotal aha moments.

Speaker 2: 1:36

So David and I have been talking about maximizing our sales teams and our teams efficiency and efficacy in our work. And, david, one of the things that you had mentioned to me recently was you've been working on implementing a four-day work week at your organization commonly well. Can you tell me a little bit about how that works and what you've put together?

Speaker 3: 2:04

You know, if we're going to be in the healthcare field and there is going to be data and science and research coming out about how to be well, how to create more sustainable workplaces that are fun to be at and that produce the best productivity output, we should apply that stuff right and in the last couple of well, three, four, maybe five years, there's been a growing move to really try to understand output and well-being in the workplace and Microsoft and a few others kind of led the way around this idea of the four-day work week not necessarily working less and not necessarily working harder in shorter times, but putting people in a position to maximize their focus and eliminating the waste of time and so that's the way we've been thinking about.

Speaker 3: 3:00

it is gosh, how many days do we just sit? And maybe we have some like standing weekly meetings on a Friday just to catch up when we? We could probably just put that into an email or something where we don't really need to meet. What if I just gave you that hour back? So that's the way we're looking at it. We're sort of looking at our time spent in activity and realizing we really only need four strong days, or four and a half strong days, of committed focus to get the same, if not more, output.

Speaker 2: 3:33

And then you're rebuilding and recovering for the next week is also really important too, to allow you to recover and do this week after week. I had an interview not that long ago. I love the idea and I'm gonna tell you where my mind goes with this Cause I had an interview with a gentleman by the name of Lee Povey not that long ago and my conversation with Lee was around corporate culture and one of the topics that we talked about was that the leadership and management needs to follow the same guidelines that they expect of their people. So when you talk to me originally about having a four day work week, my first instinct is that's amazing, because then I have another day where I'm not being pulled in a bunch of directions for other people and I could get more done on that fifth day.

Speaker 2: 4:33

And it hits me the conversation with Lee, which is a lot of times we do things like that for our staff where we say take a four day work week, or I want you gone by four o'clock so you have time with your family, or you have unlimited paid time off or anything like that right, we offer that to our staff, but then we work seven days a week, a hundred something hours full throttle, to the point of burnout, and we don't do the same things that we're asking our clients to do or our staff to do or whatever it may be what? Not only does it set a bad example, but it makes people feel self-conscious about taking that other day, and it definitely affects the culture, and it's just something to consider. How long have you been doing this four day week? Is this something you just recently started?

Speaker 3: 5:33

Well, we're like it's not a mandate, we put it out as a suggestion and we're just gonna see how people play with it. We're a few months in where I've suggested it and I'm noticing that calendars are kind of changing and shifting a little bit To your point. Though what I've noticed about myself is how much exhaust not exhaustion, but exhaust in my time is throughout the course of my day. So, as a, for instance, we scheduled an hour to talk today. That's fine, Most things. My default meeting is 25 minutes. If I can get it to 10 or 15 on a phone call, I will, Because now I've got more time to do other things and plus, in a shorter period of time you create a bit of a constraint that makes you be a bit more precise.

Speaker 2: 6:29

You find that those new meetings are a lot longer than they should be because they're face to face and you could probably get a lot more done in a shorter amount of time by doing a phone call.

Speaker 3: 6:42

Yes, imagine if we were in the office together and I was just walking down the hallway and I ran into you and there was something I needed to talk to you about. You needed to talk to me about five minutes. Yeah, max.

Speaker 2: 6:55

He doesn't schedule a meeting about it.

Speaker 3: 6:56

We'd never schedule a meeting about it. And so I'm one of those people where I have really struggled. Since starting my business because that coincided with COVID and moving out to New York and working from this room that you see here I used to be in an office. I used to love to go to the office because I could engage with somebody in three, four minutes, get feedback from them, because I was the leader needing the information to build and design the stuff. I needed, that sort of spontaneous, surprise interaction with you. You had no idea I was going to ask you a question from left field, and the only way I can get that spontaneity is in those moments in the office, and so I'm a huge proponent of physical workspace.

Speaker 1: 7:43

This is great.

Speaker 3: 7:44

I, you know we can do more because you know we're remote and it's nice that I can sort of kind of work from wherever, but we do miss out on a few things. There's a speed and a pace and a movement, and then also, which is fast but also slow when you're in office, but yeah, I think Zoom and Teams and all these things. Man, it's just, it just drags us out.

Speaker 2: 8:06

David, this is great. I really appreciate this feedback and I love the ideas. I really hope you people listening are getting some good ideas out of this too. Can you share a little information with us on Commonly Well and the recovery capital index and what you do?

Speaker 3: 8:25

Yeah, so Commonly Well is a recovery intelligence firm. We're a data analytics company and an advisory firm, so we help behavioral health companies figure out their data practices, their outcomes models and we help redesign that for them, capture that data, bring it back into useful information so they can be better at what they do. The recovery capital index was sort of our lead proprietary assessment that captures social determinant recovery capital data and then we're able to take that combined with other clinical data and sort of sort of bring that picture of a person's total health and well-being, you know, together for organizations.

Speaker 2: 9:05

Excellent, david. Thank you so much for coming on today. This has been great and I look forward to bringing you out again very soon. Yeah, thanks, mike.

Speaker 1: 9:16

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