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I run the first Chick-fil-A to offer a 3-day workweek. We received 400 job applications for a single job despite the 14-hour shifts.

Chick-fil-A Kendall local operator Justin Lindsey (left) and staff members (right).
Chick-fil-A Kendall local operator Justin Lindsey (left) and staff members (right).

Courtesy of Chick-fil-A Kendall

  • 41-year-old Justin Lindsey is the local operator of Chick-fil-A Kendall in Florida. 
  • He designed a schedule that allows employees to work consistent, full-time hours in three days.
  • He says the program has improved employee work-life balance, burnout, career growth, and retention. 

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Justin Lindsey, the owner-operator of Chick-fil-A Kendall in Miami-Dade County, Florida. His words have been edited for length and clarity.

One of the things I really set out to do when we opened this restaurant in June of 2021 was what I called “leading with generosity.” 

For me, that has two main parts: One is pay, making sure we paid a really competitive wage. And the second is time, to provide my teams with more of a balanced approach to the job. 

Traditionally, we had used the term “the gift of time” to refer to serving our guests in a quick and timely fashion. But we had always left employees out of that equation. My idea was to provide staff with this gift of time by creating a scheduling system where they would know exactly what days they worked for as long as they work here. 

From one week to the next, employees’ days off changed pretty dramatically, so I set out on a mission to see if I could create a more consistent schedule. What came out of it was the existing three-day workweek that we use now.

Now employees can look at the calendar six months in advance and know these are the three days that they work on any given week. Traditionally, at least at Chick-fil-A, that was never a possibility before. 

I split the team into two “pods” that rotate between three-day blocks of 13- to 14-hour shifts

Chick-fil-A restaurant
Chick-fil-A is famously closed on Sundays.

Brandon Bell/Getty Images

Even before the restaurant actually opened, I started mapping out a couple different things: one, how can I take the guesswork out of their schedules? And then tied to that was from a business side, how do we get more consistent?

Normally at Chick-fil-A, it’s a revolving door all day long. Somebody comes in and opens and then they leave at one or two o’clock in the afternoon, and then a whole new group comes in and closes up. Employees didn’t like the schedule because they never really knew what day they were going to have off, and we didn’t like it either from a business perspective.

So I started playing with the numbers and thinking, “what would it look like to combine some of these shifts?” Instead of doing 5 a.m. to 1 p.m., what would it look like to do like 5 a.m. to 6 p.m. as an example, and have somebody who’s there for multiple days, for breakfast, lunch, and dinner? 

Then I started looking at what would happen if we took our team leaders and cut the team in half, splitting the team into what’s known as the two “pods.” 

I realized I couldn’t schedule those really long shifts and do a normal five-day workweek. That’s why I created three-day segments, where they’d be working with the same group of people day in and day out. This would also allow them to get really comfortable and good at working with one another.

We officially started the pod program in February. It’s primarily for full-time staff who work 40-hours a week, split between three days. As of today, we have 25 team members and 18 team leaders doing it and it continues to grow.

I incorporated feedback from managers into the program’s design

When we first announced the idea of the 3-day workweek, some managers were under the impression that they would have to be on-call during the days they weren’t working. They asked me, “do I need to be available if we’re short somebody or something like that?” I told them absolutely not. If you’re off, do whatever it is that you want to do. It’s your time, your time doesn’t belong to me.

The other initial feedback was, how are we going to communicate between the two groups if they don’t interact with one another? One of the cool things that we worked through was creating this communication script that we use every week for every pod. 

The employees go through and list out every single thing that occurred during the last three days they were in the restaurant — everything from broken equipment to attendance issues. So when the second pod shows up, they can read this mini rundown newsletter of exactly what’s been going on in the restaurant. 

That came about because of questions from managers before we implemented the pod system. It was really good feedback. It makes them be very intentional about communicating and from what we’ve seen, it’s worked really well.

We received 429 job applications for the program in one week

Chick-fil-A Kendall staff.
Chick-fil-A Kendall staff now only have to work two Saturdays a month.

Courtesy of Chick-fil-A Kendall

We posted a job for a full-time team member on the three-day workweek, and in a period of a week, we had 429 applications. We conducted 40 interviews in one day. It just shows there’s people who really want to work in this industry.

Retention has also been strong. What I don’t see — in terms of the way we measure retention at the restaurant level — is what I’ve previously seen during my 12 years serving as the Chick-fil-A owner-operator. It had always become a struggle if another restaurant or another business opened around us and they were paying a little bit more than we would, we’d occasionally see people leave. Now we don’t experience that. 

There’s been people that we’ve had to remove from the program. The three-day workweek, in a lot of ways, exposes the really good and the really bad and in terms of performance, because you’re there for such a long period of the day.

It’s also allowed us to uncover up-and-coming talent that otherwise could have slipped through the cracks. Before we did this system, you just had so many managers coming and going throughout the day that it was kind of hard to gauge talent and really develop talent. 

What we’ve found with this system in particular is we’ve been able to really spot talent a lot faster than we previously could and be a little bit more agile, move a little bit quicker, and promote people faster. 

I think that’s so powerful because when you look at retention and you look at why people have traditionally left, based just from my experience, a lack of career growth and development was a big reason why. 

This system opened up that growth. On the other side, it also exposes when somebody is struggling and allows us to put them back through that development process that we have. 

One of the biggest strengths of the program itself is when I look in the dining room and I see three or four tables with my leaders out there doing development meetings. I see that almost on a day-to-day basis when I come in and I never saw that before. Because the truth was, they just didn’t have time to do it with how the traditional schedule was structured. 

Staff say the schedule has improved their life outside of work — from graduating college to traveling

Chick-fil-A Kendall staff

Courtesy of Chick-fil-A Kendall

I always say the three-day workweek doesn’t work for everyone, but for those that it does, it’s really powerful to see the impact that it has on their lives.

Recently, I was talking to one of our managers who just graduated from the University of Central Florida. Now she’s going to be pursuing a master’s degree. She just poured her heart out and told me point blank that there’s no way she would have been able to graduate if she was working the traditional five-day schedule. 

That opened my eyes to thinking “wow, what if we had not done this? Would she actually still be one of my key managers?” She’s a core part of our management team and I know how important school is to her and for her future, so when I hear things like that, I’m like, okay, this is pretty powerful stuff. 

Another employee told me they took a road trip on their seven days off to go to New York City because they wanted to see the leaves change. She literally used zero hours of PTO and she took a road trip to New York City. 

Our team, they love this industry, they love Chick-fil-A, and they love doing their jobs. They just wanted some things to change, and they just wanted some options. I think that’s all we did — just met them where they’re at and said, hey, this may not work for all of you. But if you want this, it’s out there for you. We can make it work. 

It probably would have been a whole lot easier on myself, especially as a restaurant owner, to just keep doing things the old way. It definitely would have been a lot easier, a lot less conversations, a lot less planning, and things like that. But I’m so incredibly happy and grateful that Chick-fil-A has given me the opportunity to do this. Because the impact that I’m able to have on my team, honestly, I mean, it’s incredible. 

Will this work for everybody? I don’t know. All I know is our team is happy, they’re motivated, they’re energized, and they’re eager to serve people. Hopefully other people see that and try it out and maybe it helps other people as well.

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3 ways to lead with transparency and tackle underperformance at work

Employees grouped together
To best boost clarity in the office, establish connectivity amongst employees.

10’000 Hours/Getty Images

  • No amount of collaboration will improve performance if a workplace is unorganized and dysfunctional. 
  • Clarity should be a guiding factor for leaders to get their team on the same page.
  • Encourage efficiency and show employees how their work contributes to larger company goals.

Over the past two decades, the time that managers and employees spend in collaborative activities has skyrocketed by 50% or more. But don’t mistake this increase in collaboration for healthy collaboration — that’s a far call from the reality.

Much of the collaboration that happens in organizations today is inefficient and dysfunctional. In fact, 20 to 35% of value-added collaborations come from only 3 to 5% of your employees, according to research by Babson College professor Rob Cross. 

Now that organizations are steeped in collaborative dysfunction, how do they course correct? As a leader, clarity should be your North Star metric.

Clarity is a precursor to both healthy collaboration and a host of other organizational outcomes. And it is one of the most powerful indicators of success in today’s organizations, especially as they become increasingly distributed. 

There are three fundamental drivers of clarity. As a leader, it’s important that you understand — and be able to measure — these key drivers.

Establish connectivity

Connectivity is the first driver of clarity. Work often happens through informal structures, rather than through formal organizational structures like roles, functional teams, and hierarchies. And so, collaboration cannot be understood by looking solely at these formal structures.

Instead, connectivity involves how your employees are connected through tasks, cross-functional projects, ad-hoc teams, goals, and different technologies across formal and informal channels. With employees oscillating between 13 tools an average of 30 times per day, according to research by my workplace Asana, connectivity is increasingly difficult to understand.

In advising hundreds of companies over the past several years and helping them understand how their employees are connected, I’ve learned that connectivity is often taken for granted and poorly understood by leaders. By leveraging new technologies such as work management systems, you can start to understand how your employees are connected. Mapping out your organization’s connectivity is the first step to understanding how work actually happens and is key to achieving organizational clarity. 

Provide visibility

Visibility is the second key driver of clarity. Visibility involves ensuring that your employees understand and are able to track how their work contributes to broader company goals, as well as your company mission. This understanding is ever fleeting in organizations today. According to Asana’s research, less than half of employees (46%) know how their work contributes to their company’s mission. Visibility breeds clarity and helps your employees understand why their work matters. 

Your employees also need visibility into their work output and they should have the tools to measure this output over time. Technologies that meaningfully assess workload distribution are key for gaining visibility into work output. This type of visibility will enable you and your employees to pinpoint when task, project, and goal performance are veering off track. And it will also empower your employees to adopt a data-driven approach to assessing their work performance, rather than merely going through the motions. 

Encourage efficiency

Efficiency is the final driver of clarity. By many accounts, efficiency is the new productivity. Productivity is output per unit of time, whereas efficiency is the best possible output per unit of time. Don’t conflate the two. As we embark on new ways of work, it’s no longer about executing the greatest volume of tasks — it’s about doing the right tasks in the best possible way. 

Efficiency is enabled by both connectivity and visibility. Peak efficiency happens when employees are connected across different tasks, projects, and geographic and functional silos. And it is fueled by visibility. Visibility into how work happens enables you to build workflows and integrations that leverage automation and AI to empower more efficient work. 

Efficiency is also a key precursor to effective work-life balance and a powerful antidote against burnout. When you empower your employees to produce the best possible work output, not only are they higher-performing employees, but they are less susceptible to burnout, thanks to their newfound clarity. Asana’s research has found that, among employees who feel burnt out, about one in three (29%) report feeling overworked as a result of a lack of clarity on tasks and roles.

Especially with the broader shift to remote and hybrid work, clarity is in short supply and high demand in organizations. This is underscored by the reality that employees spend an eye-popping 60% of their time on “work about work” — tasks like tracking down the status of work and duplicating work — rather than the strategic jobs that you hired them to perform. When it comes to the next era of work and empowering your employees for success, clarity is conviction. 

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3 mismatches between what employers want and what workers are looking for amid the labor shortage

Now hiring sign Arlington Virginia
Pedestrians walk by a “Now Hiring” sign outside a store on August 16, 2021 in Arlington, Virginia.

Olivier Douliery/AFP/Getty Images

  • A fundamental disconnect lies within the so-called labor shortage: Some people are struggling to find work.
  • Employers want experienced, in-person workers who can be available whenever, according to The Washington Post.
  • Due to the rise of remote work and the psychological affects of the pandemic, workers want something different.

Labor shortages are still dragging on, months after enhanced unemployment expired and the Delta wave peaked.

However, frustrated job hunters are also reporting that they’re still struggling to find work. Some are sending in hundreds of applications but never filling one of the myriad openings that employers are bemoaning.

Paradoxically, both things are true, and they reflect one of the lingering issues in the labor market: What economists call mismatches – disconnects between the prospective workforce and the jobs that are open.

Mismatches have been driving shortages for months now, as well as tightening opportunities for job seekers, and the latest reporting shows they haven’t gone away. The latest data release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that the number of people who are long-term unemployed – meaning they haven’t had a job for a bit over six months – dipped slightly in October, but is still at 2.3 million.

The Washington Post’s Heather Long and Eli Rosenberg broke down three mismatches that are keeping those labor holes open – and keeping prospective employees out.

Employers want “several years of experience”

Employers “are continuing to favor candidates with several years of experience in their industry,” Long and Rosenberg write.

But that’s ignoring the ongoing trend of people looking to take advantage of the Great Reshuffle, and switch into new roles as they reexamine what they want out of work and life. That’s difficult to do when applicants with adjacent skills get filtered out by automated hiring software.

Papia Debroy, the senior vice president of insights at Opportunity@Work, told Insider that experience filters might be leaving behind an untapped group: The 70 million workers without college degrees, who are “STARs” – Skilled Through Alternative Routes.

“Not recognizing that skills are being gained through alternative routes is not just failing these workers. It’s failing employers from finding the talent they’re looking for,” Debroy said.

Workers don’t want to be available 24/7

One mismatch coming to a head is employers’ urgent need for labor, and when employees can actually provide that labor. For instance, bartender Samuel Wiles told the Post that he’s seeing a number of bars ask for “open availability” from applicants – which means they can work any night. Wiles said he’s told all of the places he’s interviewed with that he’ll work any day other than Wednesday or Sunday; he hasn’t gotten any offers yet.

That need to hire people who can drop everything to work could be fueling the other side of the labor shortage. Bank of America researchers Aditya Bhave and Ethan Harris wrote in a September note that some businesses are making current employees work harder and longer amidst shortages; “this is not sustainable: you can only speed up the treadmill for so long,” Bhave and Harris note.

Indeed, as Insider’s Dominick Reuter reports, understaffed workplaces are foisting more work and longer hours on their current employees – leading to rampant burnout.

Workers want to be remote, employers want them in person

Flexibility has become the name of the game for many workers. That includes the current job seekers, who want the option to stay at home – even though employers want them in-person.

“I have every right to work in a safe working environment. I want to work from home, I want to keep safe,” former bartender Laviana Hampton told the Post.

In an Insider survey of 1,105 US adults from August 16 to August 17, 37% of respondents looking for a job said remote flexibility would attract them most in a job offer or incentivize them to expand their job search – outranking higher wages. But with in-person industries like leisure and hospitality still leading recovery, that may be easier said than done.

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Junior lawyers at a leading US firm clocked off at 11:28 pm on average during lockdown, a survey found

estate lawyers
Remote working and increased deal flow took its toll on junior lawyers during lockdown earlier this year, a survey suggests.

shironosov/Getty Images

  • London-based junior lawyers at Kirkland & Ellis worked 14-hour days during lockdown, a survey found.
  • Average working hours across the legal sector have risen, according to the survey by Legal Cheek.
  • Remote work had “totally eroded” the work-life balance for junior lawyers, said one respondent.

Junior lawyers at the London office of a major US firm worked more than 14 hours a day on average during lockdown in early 2021, according to a survey of sector working conditions.

Juniors at the US law firm Kirkland & Ellis clocked off at 11:38 p.m. on average during lockdown, the survey, by Legal Cheek, an industry-focused news site, found.

Legal Cheek surveyed 2,500 trainees and junior associates at 100 law firm offices in London and the UK about their working hours at the start of 2021, when the UK was in lockdown due to a surge in COVID-19 infections.

Survey data showed that, on average, junior staff at eight of the 10 firms with the longest working hours were starting earlier than during the same period in 2020, while junior staff at all 10 firms were working later into the night.

Remote working and a surge in demand for legal services were the reasons behind the uptick, Legal Cheek said.

With an average working day of 14 hours, Kirkland & Ellis topped the list, with junior staff clocking on at 9.14am and finishing at 11.28pm on average. Other US-headquartered firms Ropes & Gray and Weil, Gotshal & Manges were second and third with average days of 13.5 hours and 12.5 hours respectively, per the survey.

Demand has been particularly high for firms specialising in private equity deals, which surged in December 2020 as buyers took advantage of low interest rates and government stimulus packages.

At Kirkland & Ellis, revenues are expected to grow from $4.15 billion to $5 billion this year due to a surge in such deals, for which it consults, according to the FT.

Kirkland & Ellis, Ropes & Gray, and Weil, Gotshal & Manges did not immediately respond to Insider’s requests for comment.

One anonymous respondent at an unnamed firm told Legal Cheek that their work-life balance had been “totally eroded” by working from home, as their days blurred into one without commutes or routine. Some were working longer as a result of increased deal flow.

“Finishing work before midnight is unheard of during the week, and weekend working is a regular occurrence,” one unnamed respondent said.

However, other anonymous respondents told Legal Cheek that long hours were expected within the sector and that senior managers were understanding. Pay and starting bonuses have increased as firms battle to retain staff.

The impact of the pandemic and remote work have been felt in other sectors. Last year junior staff at Goldman Sachs highlighted excessive working hours in a pitch deck to senior management.

Veterinary surgeons, health care workers, and office staff have all said they’re burning out after nearly two years of increased demand, and COVID-19 pressures.

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I convinced my boss to let me work a 4-day week after suffering from burnout – here are the exact steps I took to get them on board

brown haired woman facing camera
Annabel Lee.

Courtesy of Annabel Lee

  • Annabel Lee wanted a four-day workweek, but she worried what her employer would think.
  • This is how she made her request and how she ensured it would work for both parties.
  • She worked a four-day week for five years and continued the arrangement when she began freelancing.

In 2015, I burned out at my job as an account manager for a technology PR agency, where I had worked full time for the previous five years. I was exhausted and stressed, and I realized that I needed to reevaluate my work-life balance to feel better.

I decided I wanted to reduce my working hours to a four-day week. But I had no dependents at the time and didn’t know how to request flexible working for well-being and mental-health reasons, rather than for childcare or family commitments.

I worried my request might be seen as a lack of commitment toward my job (it wasn’t) and affect my career progression.

After a lot of research, I made a formal request, and it was granted.

This is my checklist of things I did and that I’d recommend to anyone who wants to make a similar flexible-working request.

Consider when and how to make the request

I used an upcoming annual review to make my request. This meant I had time to prepare and could broach the subject verbally. I considered making the request by email. There are pros and cons of each: An email is less direct, but it gives you no space for an immediate discussion.

A meeting can feel more intense, but it offers a chance to discuss any issues in the moment, which allows for a more honest and upfront conversation. I found this worked well because I was able to get instant feedback on my request and gauge the response from my managers immediately.

Explain the reasons why

Before the meeting, I prepared notes, which helped me feel calm and confident. I included an overview of why I was making my request. I explained that I was burned out, that it was affecting my well-being and work, and that I wanted to reduce my working hours to create more balance.

Discussing your mental health or personal issues with your boss can feel tricky. I found it helpful to prepare clear, concise, and factual notes beforehand.

Be specific and flexible with what you’re suggesting

I went in with a clear request: I wanted to work a 30-hour week over four days rather than a 37.5-hour week over five.

Having a specific request makes it easier to get a straightforward yes or no answer, or alternative but concrete suggestions.

I said I was flexible about which day I would have off and explained that I was happy to identify a day that suited the company. We ultimately decided on a Thursday as this worked best with scheduled meetings and when others were working.

Being this clear, while offering to help set up a new arrangement, helped make it easy for my employer to understand (and agree to) what I was proposing.

Know exactly what this means for your take-home pay

I had calculated that I could afford a reduction to four-fifths of my salary. In real terms, this was not a 20% cut in take-home pay because I was taxed higher on the last fifth of my earnings.

There are good salary apps (I used this one) that show what a reduction in your salary means in real terms, including how it would affect tax, pension, and national insurance contributions.

Weigh how much money you can afford to lose if you reduce your hours, or whether you’d prefer to ask for compressed hours (such as a full week over four days).

Anticipate issues or objections

I considered possible issues or objections and included proposed solutions. In my case, this included how to manage client work when I was off and how to tell clients about my reduced hours.

I laid out how we could manage this by ensuring that other members of the team had free capacity to cover my reduced hours, and that there would always be a suitable cover when I wasn’t working. I also emphasized that I was happy to be contacted on my day off in an emergency.

Explain how it benefits you and them

I concluded by detailing the benefits for everyone: For me, this included improved mental health and greater happiness at work. For my employer, it meant improved productivity, reduced salary payments, and greater staff retention.

After the review, we agreed that my employer would consider the request and respond within a few weeks

It was helpful to put everything in writing and agree to a timeframe to discuss it again. I thanked them for considering my request and explained that I was happy to work together to agree on an approach that worked for everyone.

My request was granted. I stayed in the job for another five years. Thanks to the four-day week, I recovered from burnout and was happier, as well as more productive.

It suited me so well that, when I left the job in 2020 to freelance, I stuck to working four days a week.

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Burned-out vets say that people buying too many puppies and angry pet owners has made their job much worse during the pandemic. More and more want to cut their hours.

dog checkup vets
Millions of people bought puppies and other pets during the pandemic.

Yegor Aleyev / Getty

  • Veterinarians say they have been under huge pressure during the pandemic.
  • Booming ownership and COVID-19 restrictions have exacerbated longstanding challenges in the sector.
  • Recruiters say staff are increasingly looking to cut their hours, which could make the issue worse.
  • See more stories on Insider’s business page.

Alice Moore, a veterinarian, loves her job – but says the last two years have been “horrendous.”

She has spent six years as a small animal veterinary surgeon based in Trowbridge, Wiltshire, in Southwest England, after five years of training. As much as she adores animals, Moore said the pandemic has, at times, left her struggling to find the motivation to go into work.

Pandemic restrictions have limited her work to emergency care, and she has often had to consult owners in the surgery parking lot, she said.

As a veterinarian, you have a duty of care to your animals, and not being able to offer the usual service is disheartening, Moore told Insider. Absences due to COVID-19 outbreaks – or when schools were closed during the national lockdown – have added to the anxiety that comes with working during a pandemic.

“I feel like this job is going to destroy me one day, but I just can’t leave it,” Moore said.

Alice Moore.
Alice Moore.

Yasmin Chant / Garston Veterinary Group

Her experience is typical of many working as veterinary surgeons over the last two years. Industry bodies and veterinarians themselves say it’s driving many to burnout.

A recruiter Insider spoke to said that more and more vets wanted to cut their surgery hours, and warned this could exacerbate long-running challenges over working conditions within the industry.

Intense workloads, amplified by the emotional burden that caring for very sick animals often brings, can leave many veterinarians stretched, said James Russell, the senior vice president of the British Veterinary Association. In the UK, Brexit has led to further shortages of qualified staff.

COVID-19 exacerbated these problems, at a time when demand for services is soaring.

More than 3 million UK families have bought a pet since the start of the pandemic, according to a survey by The Pet Food Manufacturing Association. In the US, that number is estimated to be as high as 10 million.

Some surgeries have stopped registering new clients so they can keep on top of demand, piling further pressure on those surgeries that kept their books open.

This hasn’t necessarily resulted in vets working longer hours – they typically work 40-hour weeks – but it has increased the pressure they’re under.

“My lunch breaks for the last two years have probably been about 10 minutes,” Rory Cowlam, a vet with five years’ experience working in small animal care at a surgery in Dulwich, an upmarket district of London, told Insider. “The time pressure is absolutely insane,” he added.

Many vets have found it difficult to provide clients with the level of service that they typically expect, Cowlam said.

This can leave clients unhappy, and some have even targeted staff.

According to a survey by the British Medical Association released in July 2021, 57% of vets said that they felt threatened or intimidated at work – a 10 percentage point increase compared with 2019. The problem was more pronounced in small private clinics, like the ones that Moore and Cowlam work in.

Cowlam said people had squared up to him, and that he’d witnessed his colleagues receive abuse. While Moore hadn’t received any physical abuse, she said “the constant, low-level chronic dissatisfaction and backlash day in and day out gets very disheartening.”

Both say that the overwhelming majority of clients however are understanding and polite.

Vets want to cut their hours

Cowlam admits he is one of the lucky ones – he only spends three days a week working in a clinic, a schedule he switched to two years ago to focus on his other work in television and as an author writing about the sector.

Moore is planning to cut her days in the clinic from four days to three, she says.

The trend of veterinary staff looking for roles outside of the surgery is becoming more common.

“We get numerous calls every week from vet surgeons or nurses asking us to find them work that is non-clinical work – working for farming or nutrition roles where they can use their skills for non-clinical roles,” Justin Powlesland, CEO and founder of JHP recruitment, which specialises in the veterinary industry in the UK and US, told Insider.

Others are cutting down their hours by becoming temporary – known as locum – workers, Powlesland said.

“They know they’re going to be worked to the bone in those three days, but know they can earn as much, if not more money doing that than a permanent position,” he said.

Neither Cowlam nor Moore have plans to leave the industry full-time. Many of the immediate challenges posed by the pandemic will ease with time, they said – but both have at times worried about their profession.

“If the vet industry falls into disarray and we can’t provide the service that animals need, then pet owners around the country are screwed,” Cowlam said.

Expanded Coverage Module: what-is-the-labor-shortage-and-how-long-will-it-last

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The author of a new book about the 4-day work week breaks down 3 myths about achieving your goals – and outlines one simple step towards working fewer hours

Joe Sanok.
Joe Sanok is the author of Thursday is the new Friday.

Joe Sanok

  • Joe Sanok is the author of a new book about the four-day work week.
  • Changing your weekend plans can be a good first step towards a four-day work week, he said.
  • The idea is to build more value in your life outside of just your job, he said.

Joe Sanok, the author of a new book about productivity and a four-day work week, says there are three myths about achieving your goals that everyone should be aware of.

The first is that there is a universal blueprint for fulfilling your goals – instead, people need to learn what works for them, he told Insider.

The second myth is that you need to work all hours of the day, seven days a week, to find success. People who advocate hustle culture are not making best use of their time, he said.

The third myth, Sanok said, is that “our egos need to be wrapped up in our jobs.” Doing something that rewards you is important – but as a society, we overvalue work and undervalue family time, Sanok said.

Sanok is a private consultant and host of the “Practice of Practice” podcast. His book, ‘Thursday is the new Friday: How to work fewer hours, make more money and spend time doing what you want,” is a self-help book that makes the case for the four-day work week.

For some, the hardest bit is getting comfortable with the very idea of working less

The book is not about changing company culture, Sanok writes. Not everyone can cut their work days down as much as they want after, all – bad managers can be a barrier, for example, he writes. A lack of financial freedom, or limited access to childcare support, can also hold people back.

But there are lots of practical hacks to make you more productive and cut down your working hours, some of which Sanok lists in his book.

Some CEOs who have made the swap say that one of the hardest parts is simply becoming comfortable with the entire concept of working less.

This is because the idea of a 40-hour plus, five-day week created by “industrialists” is still how many structure their work lives, which in turn shapes people’s identities, Sanok writes.

It’s important, therefore, to first to find value in other parts of your life, according to Sanok.

He has a few tips for how to prepare yourself to make that change.

The simple technique for starting: make your weekend work for you

Sanok has a simple, practical technique for anyone who wants to take a step back from work but is finding it hard to do so – start adding more value into your weekends.

Envisage your weekend plans, then add something that will make it better, such as giving yourself permission to read a book, or going for a hike, for example.

At the same time, remove something from your plans that makes you feel stressed.

That could mean, for example, ordering groceries online instead of spending a morning doing them in person, or not meeting a “toxic” person just because you feel like you need to.

Most people live their weekends as a reaction to a stressful week, Sanok said – instead, “be proactive on our weekends to think about what could this future week be if I entered into it fully recharged.”

Take small steps

If you have the luxury of taking Fridays off for a period of time, go for it, Sanok said. But for some people, just leaving a few hours earlier is progress.

To begin with, stop and work out when you’re most productive and what you want to achieve – then draw up a plan for trying to achieve it, he said.

“Having the mindset that slowing down is the key to then killing it on the other side,” he added.

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Companies struggling to hire and retain staff are dumping more work on existing employees – and it’s driving a new wave of burnout

hiring sign coronavirus

OLIVIER DOULIERY/AFP/Getty Images

  • Job openings and employee quits are both at record highs, and it now takes on average of 7 weeks to fill a role.
  • A rising trend of “ghosting” in the hiring process is straining the individuals who remain.
  • Some employers are asking workers to do a job and a half while only paying for one.
  • See more stories on Insider’s business page.

Tad Long calls the past three months his “summer from hell.”

Long is a district manager and director of operations for a group of Mod Pizza franchises in Ohio and Indiana, a well-salaried career he’s earned through three decades of rising up the ranks in the food-service industry.

Throughout June and July, Long told Insider he was routinely working 90-hour weeks, personally filling in for missing hourly workers and managers, opening at one location and closing at another, all while frantically trying to hire new staff.

“It’s total chaos,” he said. “I’ve had to interview people while I’m working.”

Long said his company’s increased wages and employee bonuses helped calm things down, but the season was so strenuous it caused him to lose 30 pounds. Since reaching a breaking point in August, he has been gradually recovering, but he doesn’t feel he’s fully out of the woods yet.

Both job openings and employee quits have been at record highs, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, and a rising trend of “ghosting” in the hiring process is putting additional strain on the individuals who are left trying to do the job of several people.

A decade ago it took just three weeks to fill a job on average, but that number has shot up to more than 7 weeks. At the same time, it seems that some employers are trying to find new hires who will do a job and a half while only paying for one.

Joel Innes told Insider he was hired for a dishwasher job at a large hotel in New Mexico, where he says he was the lowest-paid employee. In addition to doing dishes for as many as 900 people, he said his responsibilities included cleaning the employee lounge and mopping out three commercial kitchens.

“The first week I was there they didn’t even have a working drain so I had a garbage can that filled up with the dirty dishwater and food that I had to dump in the giant drain in the floor and then clean up all the filth after,” he said.

On top of that, Innes said his managers kept adding new tasks like bussing tables and plating food. Fed up, Innes quit without saying a word.

And it’s not only low-wage jobs where some employers appear to expect a lot more work for the same or less money.

Christinette Dixon told Insider she sees many job listings in hospital administration with descriptions and responsibilities that don’t fit in a normal full-time schedule.

“This job was at least 12 hours a day,” she said about one diversity and inclusion manager role she considered. “They’re going to work the director and the manager to death. Like, the manager just quit because she’s working 12 hours a day making peanuts.”

When Dixon asked why there wasn’t an additional position for a coordinator to help handle the workload, she was told there wasn’t room in the budget.

Christina Garrett, the general manager for the cafe and grille at Gettysburg Battlefield in Pennsylvania, told Insider she has hired 13 different people this year for the same position, eight of whom either never showed up or quit without notice.

In a typical season she would need 40 people to staff the operation, but she currently has just 12 – just enough to cover the 9-to-5 daily hours for the cafe, but not the large dining room.

The lack of staff is taking its toll on Garrett’s team – and her personally. She said she has covered many shifts in the past 18 months entirely on her own, with no line employees at all. Her husband has even pitched in to help cover shifts. Although her company raised wages and increased bonuses, those moves haven’t been enough.

“Seasoned associates in the service industry are drained and quite frankly tired of feeling that way with little to show for it except time missed with their children and family,” Garrett said.

“Even the very best team of five cannot possibly accomplish the same that things the mediocre team of 20 did,” she added.

Expanded Coverage Module: what-is-the-labor-shortage-and-how-long-will-it-last

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Employee burnout is on the rise – here’s what companies can do to help

A woman wearing a grey sweater sits at her desk with her face in her hands.
Battling burnout should be a top-down approach.

Westend61 via Getty Images

  • Nearly 70% of US workers reported their burnout got worse during COVID, according to a survey from Indeed.
  • Companies can help by encouraging employees to prioritize rest and put their well-being first.
  • When leaders normalize unplugging and taking time off, employees are more likely to do the same
  • See more stories on Insider’s business page.

Earlier this year, like so many other companies, my workplace heard loud and clear from our employees that they were feeling exhausted, disconnected, and burnt out. Sadly, this wasn’t a surprise.

The pace of high-growth organizations is often unsustainable. In a recent survey, nearly 70% of US workers said their level of burnout has worsened throughout the pandemic. My workplace responded by introducing a few days of rest and new initiatives to normalize taking breaks and prioritizing wellness. But steps like these aren’t enough – employees everywhere still need more balance and less burnout.

That’s why companies need to invest in long-term changes to how they operate in order to truly battle burnout. While my workplace hasn’t banished burnout for good just yet, we have discovered strategies that are helping employees prioritize rest and minimize stress. Here are three to consider bringing back to your organization:

1. Be vulnerable with your customers

To respond to burnout, companies like Bumble have given their staff a week off. I know what you might be thinking: That would never work for your organization, right? You have customers who depend on you – they’d be livid if you were offline for a week.

We were worried about this, too, before implementing HubSpot’s annual “Week of Rest” and so we proactively communicated to our customers why we were taking time off as a company and what to expect from our support staff in case of emergency. We braced for hundreds of angry replies but instead, we got the opposite.

Our customers were thrilled that we were investing in our people’s well-being, asked how they could implement the same benefit at their company, and even said they were proud to work with us. This was a good reminder that when customers invest in your product, they’re investing in your people, too.

So if you’re adopting initiatives to prioritize employees’ well-being, proactively let your customers know. It helps set expectations for how they can work with you, but it also gives them transparency into your culture, values, and priorities.

2. Prioritize deep work

When was the last time you had a few hours to dig into a strategy document, plan ahead, or think creatively? If you can’t remember, you’re not alone. Jumping from Zoom meetings to Slack to email barely leaves time for lunch, let alone productivity.

That’s why we adopted a “No Internal Meeting Fridays” rule. This ensures we’re taking care of our customers and candidates by continuing external meetings, but that we’re creating space for our employees and leaders to do deep work.

The goal isn’t to cram meetings into every other day of the week, either. It forces us to ask the million-dollar question: Can this meeting be an email? By having an operating system that values intentional work over time-in-meetings, people have more time to think, create, and reflect.

3. Set the tone at the top

Building a culture of flexibility and balance only works if employees feel empowered to use it. That’s why your leadership team needs to be leading from the front in battling burnout.

For example, when we had our global “Week of Rest,” our executive leadership team fully unplugged. If you tell employees not to work but then spend the week racking up tasks, emails, and assignments for them, you’re missing the point.

Similarly, leaders should practice leaving loudly, using Slack statuses to signal that you’re with family or taking a break, and prioritizing your own time to rest and recharge. It’s critical we’re normalizing unplugging and mental health by walking the walk ourselves.

We learned the hard way that burnout gets worse before it gets better. Uncertainty has only made burnout even worse, so I wish I had made deeper changes earlier to our operating system to address them.

If you’re struggling to get buy-in or alignment on long-term burnout initiatives, just remember that your people are your strongest asset. Investing in their success long-term is investing in your company’s and customers’ success long-term.

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My burnout was causing anxiety-induced chest pains and mental spirals – cold-water swimming twice a week made a huge difference

Split image of woman swimming in river and sitting by river in wetsuit
Lauren Crosby Medlicott in the water in a swimsuit and by the river in her wetsuit.

Courtesy of Lauren Crosby Medlicott

  • The freelancer Lauren Crosby Medlicott was having chest pains when she opened her computer to work.
  • A doctor friend suggested cold-water swimming as a possible solution.
  • She swims in the river at least twice a week and has seen a marked decrease in the pain and anxiety.
  • See more stories on Insider’s business page.

At the beginning of this summer, I started to experience a pulsing pain in my chest nearly every time I thought about work.

Each time I thought about pitching a story idea, editing a recent article, or what readers thought of a finished piece, I felt a sharp stab in the left side of my chest.

Instead of closing the computer and taking a break, I pushed ahead, eager to advance my journalism career, and the pain just became more frequent.

As a late comer to the profession – just starting out at 32 – I am painfully aware of how far I am behind those who have worked in the field for years.

Over the past year, my ambition to succeed has led me to burnout and anxiety, which in turn has meant I can’t think straight, write well, or edit analytically. At my lowest point, I remember sitting in front of my computer for hours, re-reading rejection letters from editors, manically searching Twitter for story ideas, biting my fingernails to the quick, and coming up with absolutely nothing to write about.

I wanted to give up on this new career.

A doctor friend of mine had been begging me to go swimming in cold water with her, praising its healing benefits. I’d read the purported power of daily blasts of cold water in the shower to elevate mood. And I had heard how Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey reportedly sits in ice baths, which can reduce inflammation in the body.

I wasn’t convinced cold water would work for my anxiety, but I had nothing to lose.

At the start of the summer, after a series of minor panic attacks, I took my friend up on her offer. We drove separately, met at the car park close to the River Taff in Wales, and walked together to the entry point. With only a bathing suit on, I slowly lowered myself into the deep river running through the woods – reassured by my friend that the temperature was supposed to take my breath away.

Within minutes, my limbs felt numb as my body went into shock at the change in temperature. My friend encouraged me to keep moving so that my body would heat and to take deep breaths until my body adjusted. Eventually, although my skin felt numb, I found the chill of the water bearable. We stayed in for only 15 minutes, but when I got out to warm up and walk back to the car, I could take deep breaths – something I couldn’t manage when anxiety took over – and there was no pain in my chest.

After that initial dip, I was hooked. I found The Outdoor Swimming Society website and started researching how to swim safely in cold water. I learned the importance of getting warm and dry as quickly as possible after a dip. While a wetsuit isn’t a must, I knew I would swim more in the colder months with one. I started swimming twice a week in the river close to our house.

I’d either swim with my husband when we had childcare or with my doctor friend. I felt more comfortable having another person with me. It takes nearly no preparation: I get my wetsuit on before I leave the house, throw a towel and warm change of clothes in a bag, and head off. From start to finish, I’m done in an hour.

Recently, the chest pain I’d had before the swims started on a Thursday afternoon, after a series of stressors I couldn’t control. I felt myself spiraling, negative thoughts returning. Sometimes, sleep helps. But I woke Friday morning with the same pain and decided I would swim before diving into work. I phoned around to friends, and no one could make it, so I went alone.

To be safe, I texted a friend to say when I was going and let her know I’d text right when I got out of the water. I dropped my kids at school and headed to the river. Within seconds of jumping in, the chest pain disappeared. I was in for 15 minutes – I’d normally stay in for 30 – but when I got home, I was pain free and could crack on with my to-do list. I managed to write and send two articles that day while the kids were in school.

While I’m hesitant about cold-water swimming in the middle of winter, I’m determined to figure out a way to continue jumping in at least twice a week.

I feel like my mental health, and my work, depends on it.

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