Business View Oceania | September 2020

15 BUSINESS VIEW OCEANIA SEPTEMBER 2020 saw there was a need for three things. One is funding – and that’s where the foundations will come into play. Two is the boots-on-the-ground strategy. That’s why Andrew wrote the book because there are so many people out there who wanted to buy him a coffee and pick his brain – and we literally cannot drink that much coffee! So the book gives us an opportunity to share the idea. It’s not just about our experience, it’s also about working less as a society. We’re in the process of licensing consultants to help companies be 4 day week compliant. They’ll be independent contractors and we’ll give them a system where they can support businesses in this journey. “We are also launching a Global Academic Board because quality research and aggregation of 4 day week research is also needed. A single place where government, businesses and other interested parties can find the correct information. In addition, the Board would be responsible for identifying gaps in that research and ensuring that research projects take place around the world to fill the gaps. They will also support companies to do internal research projects for their own Board and key stakeholders to prove why 4 day week is a good thing.” BVO: When you and Andrew implemented this concept at Perpetual Guardian and then published the book, did you have any idea of the overwhelming reach it would achieve? Lockhart: “Not at all! This started as a really interesting academic exercise, as far as Andrew was concerned. It was something we were looking to do as an internal adventure into measuring productivity, because if we could improve productivity, could we reward our staff with time off? And we have an excellent PR firm that said, “We can get you in the local paper and possibly Breakfast TV and that would be worthwhile for your brand.” We agreed, and it just went from there. We were fortunate to do research alongside it and we had a couple of excellent academics in New Zealand that became very actively involved in the project. That was a large part of the success. “Unfortunately, the mindset people have is ‘4 day week = 3 day weekend’ and that’s not what we’re talking about. The conversation now is, how will we work if we believe that AI is going to take all our jobs? And we will have different ways that we need to work. This is something we have to confront and should have an answer for. Because otherwise, the technology piece will choose the answer for us. For the most part, the working population is made up of people who want to come to work, feel that they’ve done something meaningful for the money they’ve earned, and feel productive and then go home to their families and be able to have proper lives. “We were talking to a University professor and he couldn’t get his head around it because he was so infinitely busy and what he couldn’t understand was that his busyness was getting Charlotte Lockhart CEO of 4 Day Week Global