\Startup Life Analysis/ The four-day work week experiment French startup Welcome to the Jungle experimented with the four-day work week for five months, and ended up adopting it definitively for all its employees. By Marie Mawad in Paris 15 October 2020 \Startup Life Chief of staff: the ‘must-have hire’ for startup CEOs? By Miriam Partington in Berlin 7 January 2021 \Startup Life Analysis/ The four-day work week experiment French startup Welcome to the Jungle experimented with the four-day work week for five months, and ended up adopting it definitively for all its employees. By Marie Mawad in Paris 15 October 2020 Everyone should switch to a four-day work week. That’s the unnuanced conclusion that French startup Welcome to the Jungle came to after experimenting with having some of its employees work four days a week for five months last year. The Paris-based startup, whose talent recruitment platform is a go-to place for technology companies, has since adopted the rhythm definitively and generalized it for all its staff in France. Advertisement This week, it published a manifesto encouraging other startups — and all companies eventually — to think about conducting similar experiments, and shared its conclusions in a report and a documentary. For Welcome to the Jungle, scaling back on days spent at work turned out to be a good way to boost profitability, despite maintaining salaries. It also drove employee satisfaction up, it said. “Everyone was motivated to managed their time at work better and made choices that were more profitable for the company,” chief executive Jeremy Cledat said. “We gave our employees more autonomy and in exchange they became more rigorous with their daily planning.” Working four days a week instead of the usual five leads to cutting back on pointless meetings and, for employees, it translates into better work-life balance, according to a report published Tuesday by the startup. And while employees reported feeling more stress on the job, they also dealt with it better than before. People’s satisfaction at work improved, Welcome to the Jungle said. An excerpt of the results from Welcome to the Jungle’s experiment. It took a few months for the new organisation to take hold and the positive impact on performance to be felt though. The first month of the experiment led to a drop in performance of 20%, but that trend reversed towards the end of the five-month trial, Welcome to the Jungle said. The startup brought in consulting firm Fabernovel and a group of neuroscientists to measure the impact of its experiment. It noticed that it took some departments longer than others to adapt: technical teams were comfortable with it after two months, while it took the commercial teams about four months. The experiment was initially conducted with 80 people, and has since been generalised to all of Welcome to the Jungle’s 135 French employees. The company has 160 staff worldwide. Advertisement Help Sifted get bigger and better (and get a sneak peak at our future plans). Please take our reader survey. Take the survey Terms of Use Related Articles How to have a second career as an innovation consultant By Oliver Graham-Yooll Click here to read more Why plant-meat maker Moving Mountains is stocking up the supermarket shelves By Sarah Drumm Click here to read more Beware EU money in startups By Nicolas Colin Click here to read more Why hiring freelancers helps your startup grow Sponsored Fiverr Click here to read more Get the best of Sifted in your inbox By entering your email you agree to Sifted’s Terms of Use Sign up to \Future Proof Sifted’s weekly \Corporate Innovation roundup email By entering your email you agree to Sifted’s Terms of Use Most Read 1 \Fintech Inside Revolut’s bid to become a bank 2 \Venture Capital Europe’s top climate tech investors 3 \Mobility Glovo partners with real estate investor to pile €100m into ‘dark stores’ 4 \Venture Capital Klarna cofounder Niklas Adalberth’s Norrsken Foundation launches €100m impact fund 5 \Mobility Last-mile-delivery startup Budbee raises €52m as ecommerce booms 2 Join the conversation Subscribe newest oldest most voted Notify of new follow-up comments new replies to my comments Ian Cartwrightwhich days did they work in a week – Mon-Thurs or Tues-Fri? Did everyone work the same shift pattern or did they split people so a Mon-Fri cover but everyone did 4 days per week? Thanks Ian Britt OrstadiusOf course that is possible and even a good idea. But you have to be well planned and focused.
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