Hello, I'm Henry.
Speaker:And I am Maureen.
Speaker:And on this week's, uh, podcast we have Andrew Barnes, the
Speaker:originator of the four day week, who made it go absolutely global.
Speaker:Maureen, tell me what gives you joy at work?
Speaker:Well, first of all, let me just say, 'cause I know you're really
Speaker:excited about this four day week.
Speaker:You know, 'cause we've, we've introduced that.
Speaker:So this is gonna be awesome.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:So that not only has given me joy that you are happy about this, the joy
Speaker:that I am, that I want to share today.
Speaker:Cause one of the things that I really like is watching leaders evolve.
Speaker:You know, I mean we deal with adults and watching them come in
Speaker:to Happy and then, you know, just getting that leadership experience.
Speaker:But I have my athletes and you know, I talk about my young athletes a lot.
Speaker:So it's actually seen them evolve as young.
Speaker:Leaders as well.
Speaker:And I have two athletes that have really, really given me so
Speaker:much joy watching them involved in their athletics career.
Speaker:You know, as short as it is, getting two PBs, that's called personal
Speaker:Bests in the indoor competition.
Speaker:So that was really delightful just to watch them, really do well.
Speaker:Excellent.
Speaker:What's given you joy, Henry?
Speaker:Well, actually I'm gonna to go with the four day week as my, as my be because
Speaker:of, you know, Andrew Barnes is here.
Speaker:And I just love the four day week.
Speaker:Um, it's, you know, I get to get to stay off on a Friday, and as a result,
Speaker:I've done more cycling than ever.
Speaker:In last year, I did 149 miles, uh, a week.
Speaker:A week.
Speaker:And I've never done that before, and that's partly, that is definitely
Speaker:down to the four day week.
Speaker:But let me tell you about what, what other people have said about it.
Speaker:There's, um, what some of our, some of our, our staff have said,
Speaker:the best bit is having a day to do things for me, like activities,
Speaker:life admin, and just chill time.
Speaker:I've never felt so consistently fresh and full of energy starting the week.
Speaker:Um, there's another one here.
Speaker:I have a day off in the middle of the week and it really helps me decompress.
Speaker:Working days can be intense.
Speaker:Having a break in the middle of the week means I can step away
Speaker:from it and come back to work calmer and more compassionate.
Speaker:It's just, you know, It just is brilliant.
Speaker:Brilliant.
Speaker:The four day week is fabulous, so let's get on to Andrew Barnes.
Speaker:So, Andrew, tell me about how you got involved in the four day
Speaker:week, uh, with, uh, Perpetual
Speaker:Well, you know, I used to be a binge reader of The Economist magazine
Speaker:on planes from Auckland to London.
Speaker:Uh, this is pre pandemic.
Speaker:And I was sitting on a plane and I was reading an article and it said
Speaker:that the Brits were only productive for two and a half hours a day.
Speaker:And I thought, wow.
Speaker:And, and by the way, you know, everybody out there is listening and
Speaker:who is from Canada and feeling smug at this moment, you are only productive
Speaker:for one and a half hours a day.
Speaker:Wow.
Speaker:Now, I in seriously seriousness, sat down and said, well,
Speaker:why is that happening?
Speaker:What is it in the way in which we're working that means that
Speaker:productivity is so small?
Speaker:And if you think about it, you know, it's a lot of the interruptions
Speaker:that you get during the day.
Speaker:It's the phone calls you get, it's the dealing with personal admin.
Speaker:It's the fact often that you need, after a long commute, you need to decompress.
Speaker:So you, you know, you take all of that time.
Speaker:And obviously the overall scourge of, Uh, of meetings.
Speaker:So I, I thought, well, what would happen if I did a, a deal with my
Speaker:staff and I said, look, if you can think about how you might do things
Speaker:differently, if you could do it in four days rather than five, then you
Speaker:know I will pay you the same amount.
Speaker:I'm not bothered about anything.
Speaker:I just want, you know, I want the output.
Speaker:So I will, we'll, we'll pay you for five days.
Speaker:You only have to work for four.
Speaker:We've gotta keep the productivity and the output,
Speaker:the customer service the same.
Speaker:That was the deal, that was the argument I, I put to my team back in
Speaker:2018, and they rose to the challenge.
Speaker:Um, that then of course, led to the, what was the four day week movement.
Speaker:And, um, did you expect it to lead to, uh, the four day week movement
Speaker:or did you just think it was just, you would just do it yourself?
Speaker:I, I, I thought we'd get, we, you know, we're in New Zealand, right?
Speaker:We're very small.
Speaker:We, I thought we'd get one article on the New Zealand Herald and
Speaker:maybe we'd get something on the, on the local TV station watched
Speaker:by about, you know, 60,000 people.
Speaker:This is, this is not, you know, big stuff.
Speaker:What happens, we announced this thing, we did get the News Museum Herald.
Speaker:We did get the morning TV show, but then the phone just started to ring.
Speaker:I mean, I was literally in a room with answering one
Speaker:telephone, answering another one.
Speaker:People were just handing me phones.
Speaker:The media explosion went global.
Speaker:We had, even Jim Jeffries, the Australian comedian, did a skit on us.
Speaker:Oh.
Speaker:Yeah, prime time TV in the United States.
Speaker:We stopped counting at about 12,000 articles globally.
Speaker:And then when we announced the results of the trial, we got that again.
Speaker:And then when we announced that we were doing it permanently, same
Speaker:gig, it was sort of, you know, 12, 13, 14,000, with companies
Speaker:as well, picking up a telephone.
Speaker:So it stopped just being media and it went into organizations
Speaker:from all over the world came in.
Speaker:And, and I, I frankly over said I just couldn't drink that much coffee with,
Speaker:with CEOs to work out, uh, how we did it in the company and how they would do it.
Speaker:So then we wrote the book and then we, we created the Empire Empire and
Speaker:inverted commas, that's four a week.
Speaker:We're now in, I don't know, 20, 20 something countries worldwide.
Speaker:Pilots all over the place.
Speaker:12 staff on every continent other than Antarctica.
Speaker:Um,
Speaker:But tell me first of all about, about, your pilot.
Speaker:So you Perpetual is what's
Speaker:Perpetual Guardian is New Zealand's largest, what we
Speaker:call statutory trust company.
Speaker:Um, there's no real direct equivalent in, in, in, say, the UK, but
Speaker:we do will's, trusts, estates, that's our private client stuff.
Speaker:But we also were a supervisor for the New Zealand Capital markets.
Speaker:It's a specific role, uh, that we have.
Speaker:We've actually sold that half of the business now.
Speaker:But, so the, the organization about 320 strong.
Speaker:We have about 17 offices.
Speaker:We have retail outlets as well as, uh, as union, your traditional head office.
Speaker:We have call centers.
Speaker:We have.
Speaker:As I said, branches.
Speaker:We have people who bill on billable hours like a law firm.
Speaker:So we're a bit of a, a mishmash Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah, and that's quite, it's quite important because nine times outta 10,
Speaker:it's often people who are like lawyers or accountants who bill by the hour who
Speaker:go, you know, it wouldn't work for us.
Speaker:It sort of does.
Speaker:Um.
Speaker:So when you Billable laws is a great thing actually.
Speaker:So what happens with a law firm, it does this billable hour thing.
Speaker:And so they say we can't possibly change that.
Speaker:But if you think what they do is they do billable hours and then
Speaker:they look at the number and they go, client's not gonna pay for that.
Speaker:So we'll allocate a bit of time, which we're gonna take off that,
Speaker:and then it still looks a bit weird.
Speaker:So then they take it off.
Speaker:And in the end they come up with the number that the client, they
Speaker:think the client is prepared to pay.
Speaker:Now actually the whole process is about how long things are
Speaker:taking their allocation of cost.
Speaker:It actually has nothing to do with what you bill.
Speaker:So what you find now is increasingly come, you know, law firms that
Speaker:gone to the four oh week, what they actually do is they stop that process
Speaker:and just bill what the client, they know, the client is prepared to pay.
Speaker:Because if you think about it, you know you've got a consulting engineer.
Speaker:The engineer want two of them.
Speaker:One, they do the same piece of work, uh, the same quality, the same output.
Speaker:If you're doing billable hours, why would you pay the least
Speaker:efficient one, say who takes an hour twice as much as the efficient
Speaker:one who takes half an hour?
Speaker:It, it, it, it doesn't make any sense at all, and that is what billable hours do.
Speaker:I mean, you, the client pay for the inefficiency of the
Speaker:organization that is working
Speaker:So what, what was the result of your pilot?
Speaker:You, you, I think you did increase productivity.
Speaker:Oh yeah, well, look, you see, it was our stroke of genius.
Speaker:I'd like to say it's a stroke of genius.
Speaker:It was actually a fluke, really, uh, one of the acade local academics picked
Speaker:up a telephone and said, you know, actually, this looks very interesting.
Speaker:Do you mind if I, I do some research?
Speaker:Now, I'd always thought about it, but I wasn't sure how we would do it.
Speaker:So we ended up doing two lots of research, qualitative and
Speaker:quantitative, um, on the trial.
Speaker:So the trial was a six month experiment.
Speaker:And what we found, uh, in our business, you know, engagement
Speaker:levels, engagement, empowerment, enrichment, enthusiasm, team cohesion,
Speaker:those scores went up about 40%.
Speaker:Just off the dial.
Speaker:Um, and the researchers in New Zealand said they were the
Speaker:highest levels they'd ever seen.
Speaker:Then stress levels dropped.
Speaker:Uh, sick days, halved, uh, more people said they could do the job better
Speaker:working four days rather than five.
Speaker:We had, you know, we are the Dulles company in New Zealand, trust me.
Speaker:I mean, nobody gets up in the morning and says, you know what?
Speaker:I think I want to work for a trust company.
Speaker:So, but suddenly, of course we then had people who were queuing down the
Speaker:street to join the company because it wasn't that the work was any different.
Speaker:It was, what it said was that how we approached work was different.
Speaker:How we thought about things was different.
Speaker:And you know, we had branded cars on the streets and we had,
Speaker:I've never seen this before.
Speaker:We had our staff coming back and people saying, people are waving
Speaker:at the cars and giving a thumb.
Speaker:It was completely mad.
Speaker:So, because if you think about five years ago, six years ago, this was mad.
Speaker:I mean, what, where we've got to in, in six years is quietly extraordinary
Speaker:from what was me just sitting there going, you know, how can I improve
Speaker:the productivity in my company?
Speaker:What, what about we try this?
Speaker:And, uh, I think Gartner's now said that, um, it's going
Speaker:from radical to routine.
Speaker:Is that right?
Speaker:I, I, I think that's absolutely right.
Speaker:I mean, every, every week, uh, there is another major organization somewhere
Speaker:in the world that is shifting to, let's call it reduced hours working.
Speaker:'Cause we're quite clear about this.
Speaker:What is.
Speaker:What is a four day week?
Speaker:It's clickbait every week.
Speaker:People understand four day week, you know, I would be the richest man in the
Speaker:world if I had a dollar for every time somebody said what would it be like to
Speaker:have a three day weekend every week?
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:'cause I don't have one, right?
Speaker:Nor do my team for the most part.
Speaker:What we do is we run this mantra of 180, a hundred, a hundred
Speaker:percent pay 80% time, a hundred percent output productivity.
Speaker:And how you do that depends on the company.
Speaker:So in my own business, we have some people who take a day, some
Speaker:people who do two half days.
Speaker:Working parents.
Speaker:Um, actually it's better for them to work five days, but compressed hours.
Speaker:So you've got an ability to handle childcare.
Speaker:So what you are seeing is, I think it's an extension of the movement
Speaker:towards, you know, flexible working.
Speaker:But you've now got, you know, Lamborghini, Volkswagen, Pionneer,
Speaker:Unilever, you know, big names.
Speaker:Asda have just announced it in the UK.
Speaker:Uh, Morrison's are tweaking their version to a nine
Speaker:day fortnight, I think.
Speaker:I mean, it goes on and on and on.
Speaker:Lots and lots of of big companies.
Speaker:But also we've got.
Speaker:Small companies, and again, it's all over the world.
Speaker:We've run pilots in, you know, South Africa as well as, you
Speaker:know, the USA, Canada, UK island.
Speaker:We've got, uh, one going in Brazil, Portugal, Spain.
Speaker:Uh, campaigns in, you know, Sweden, uh, Sweden, Germany, Holland, Belgium.
Speaker:I mean, it, it, it literally is now a global movement and I think.
Speaker:It's unstoppable.
Speaker:Um, I, I, it's, it's quite humbling to think that this
Speaker:was a crazy idea six years ago.
Speaker:And that, that is the key, that it is 180, a hundred.
Speaker:You get a hundred percent of the salary for 80% of the time, as long as
Speaker:you're a hundred percent as productive.
Speaker:And I think everyone in the uk I think in the UK pilot there
Speaker:were 61 and I think virtually all of them, uh, continued.
Speaker:Is that right?
Speaker:That's right.
Speaker:That's right.
Speaker:See, what you're doing is you are, you're doing the trade off.
Speaker:You know, it's Parkinson's law effectively, isn't it?
Speaker:You know, work expands to, to meet the time available.
Speaker:So the thesis behind this is to say, right, okay, if we
Speaker:can give you the incentive.
Speaker:It's normally, the incentive goes to the company.
Speaker:If I make you more productive, if I bring in a time management consultant
Speaker:or whatever, the company gets all the benefit and me the employer,
Speaker:I'm employee, I'm having to work harder, faster, do all of it, but
Speaker:I don't get anything for that.
Speaker:Whereas this says, you know, actually, you get the benefit of it.
Speaker:Now the other thing it does is we ask employees.
Speaker:Our, our model says you go to the employees and you say, what is
Speaker:it that you would do differently?
Speaker:Because it's not about just how I do work, it's how I deal with
Speaker:things like personal admin.
Speaker:You know, we look at our mobile phones once every five minutes.
Speaker:Um, you know, we spend an inordinate amount of time often
Speaker:surfing on the internet 'cause it's way more interesting than
Speaker:the things that we are doing.
Speaker:So you can get rid of personal admin.
Speaker:You then do things like meetings, you know, we waste.
Speaker:Phenomenal amount of times in pointless meetings.
Speaker:So change how you do the meeting protocols.
Speaker:You know, the, the, the Microsoft experiment in Japan, five people in
Speaker:a meeting, no more than half an hour use Teams and got a 40% improvement in
Speaker:productivity off that one thing alone.
Speaker:So when you bring all of these things in, and then you lose half
Speaker:of your sick days, uh, as well, and often that means that you, you know,
Speaker:a, an unplanned absence is often highly, uh, damaging to productivity.
Speaker:So if you pull all of these things together, changes in attitude, changes
Speaker:in process, and often these process improvements are small things that
Speaker:are identified by an individual, what stops me from being productive?
Speaker:Then, then you get a lot of improvement in output.
Speaker:The other thing it does.
Speaker:Is we say to companies, you get your staff to sign up individually to this.
Speaker:So the deal is I'll gift you 40 days off a year.
Speaker:You have to make sure I get the same level of productivity, but
Speaker:the goals are set on a team basis.
Speaker:So you do two things happen.
Speaker:One.
Speaker:You have to have an understanding of productivity.
Speaker:I, I am, again, I would be a very rich man if every time I talk about
Speaker:this the, if the first question that came back wasn't, well,
Speaker:how do you measure productivity?
Speaker:And of course the answer is, it means you are not measuring productivity.
Speaker:That's at the heart of understand how you measure productivity.
Speaker:The second thing is, what it means is that a team member understands that.
Speaker:if I waste the time of my colleagues, then actually we
Speaker:might all lose our four day week.
Speaker:So this is about team cohesion.
Speaker:It's about cooperation.
Speaker:It's often about, you know, effective communication.
Speaker:So we find that once you do it, team cohesion scores, cooperation scores,
Speaker:again, go off the dial because suddenly.
Speaker:I have a vested interest in what you do, and you have a
Speaker:vested interest in what I do.
Speaker:And, and you know, I think I was, nobody goes over the top, you know,
Speaker:from my military experience, Henry, nobody goes over the top for a
Speaker:flag or, or a mission statement.
Speaker:I mean, we do these whack a mission statement on board.
Speaker:This is what we stand for.
Speaker:I, I doubt anybody has ever seen any more productivity
Speaker:for a mission statement.
Speaker:But if you do go over the top, you go over the top for the person on
Speaker:your left and the person on your right, that's always been the case.
Speaker:And so what this is about is that shared experience.
Speaker:So I come in and I've had a great day off, or I've had more time with
Speaker:my kids, or I'm doing a hobby or something and I'm enthusiastic.
Speaker:I'm sharing that.
Speaker:My colleague has done the same and they are sharing that.
Speaker:And so in the environment at work, you get a positivity that you
Speaker:otherwise don't get, you know?
Speaker:And also who'd have thought that healthier, happier, more rested
Speaker:employees would be more productive.
Speaker:Absolutely, and I, you know, we were doing the four day week, as
Speaker:you know, and we've had our best level of engagement in 30 years
Speaker:since we've done the four, uh, since we've done the four day week.
Speaker:It's win-win.
Speaker:it's a, this is just a loving, basically Henry then isn't?
Speaker:But, but tell me more about the, because as, as you say, people
Speaker:always talk about billable hours.
Speaker:So how would you manage in your billable hours, how do
Speaker:you manage to get that to work?
Speaker:Well, don't do billable hours.
Speaker:You know, why would I bother?
Speaker:I mean, what I know is that I'm charging on the value of
Speaker:the work that we do, right?
Speaker:So if you think about it, I don't know, what can I think?
Speaker:You buy a car, right?
Speaker:So if, if you've would, do you actually sit there and say, actually, how
Speaker:many billable hours is in this car?
Speaker:You know, I need to understand, I'm gonna, and you are Tesla and
Speaker:you are saying, oh, well let's look at the billable hours.
Speaker:You, billable hours is about how long it takes you to do it, right?
Speaker:It's, it's, you've gotta be conscious of how the length of time it takes.
Speaker:But actually.
Speaker:If, if you are the most inefficient factory in the world, you couldn't
Speaker:keep racking up the hours it takes you to build that car.
Speaker:Your car, the price you would get would be determined by
Speaker:the price of the other car.
Speaker:So, a lot of this is, as I said, it's laziness.
Speaker:I can't work out how productivity is, so what I do is I say,
Speaker:well, how long did you take?
Speaker:Well, okay, what I did with my, my own law firms who were working for us, I
Speaker:said, well, okay, don't bill me for any time after six o'clock at night then,
Speaker:because statistically I get better productivity when somebody's fresh
Speaker:in the morning, so I want those six minute blocks in the morning, thanks.
Speaker:I don't want that six minute block at night when they're tired and
Speaker:they're not doing a good job.
Speaker:Now, if you ask any legal firm, they will tell you exactly the
Speaker:same, that the productivity in those later blocks is not as good.
Speaker:Well, why am I paying the same price for it, then?
Speaker:So the reality is you find, for example QI think it's Q Legal, one of the
Speaker:fastest growing law firms in Canada doesn't do is on a four day week.
Speaker:Doesn't do billable hours.
Speaker:It's just a mind shift.
Speaker:And tell me more about you.
Speaker:You, you said about multinationals, like, um, Asda
Speaker:and these kind of companies.
Speaker:They're, are they, they're doing the four day week
Speaker:still with the same salary.
Speaker:They are.
Speaker:And, and you know, Volkswagen have been doing, actually Volkswagen
Speaker:been doing it for quite some time.
Speaker:They've been doing it for years.
Speaker:Uh, Lamborghini have just announced it.
Speaker:There's another major Italian bank has just announced it.
Speaker:Um, now you're seeing, uh, grant Thornton down here in New Zealand.
Speaker:So one of the, the bigger accounting firms, they've shifted.
Speaker:We've got, I think PWC is testing it in, Australia.
Speaker:But Australia, there's lots of activity.
Speaker:Now we're even seeing that at, uh.
Speaker:It's been pushed into the bargaining, uh, collective
Speaker:bargaining, uh, engagements now, right the way across the country.
Speaker:So I, I think we're gonna see an inflection, you
Speaker:know, very, very quickly.
Speaker:The reality is, when asked anywhere in the world, 80% people, employees
Speaker:say, you know, I need, I'd like more time for the things that I need to do.
Speaker:And, and if you think about it, you know, over the last 50 years we
Speaker:have, we've got more women into the workplace, we've got a world that's
Speaker:forever on, and what we haven't done is hand the benefits of the productivity
Speaker:improvements that we've seen, you know, we, because of technology,
Speaker:we haven't given any of that back.
Speaker:We have merely kept taking and taking and taking.
Speaker:And I think that if you look at the levels of burnout, uh, that we are
Speaker:seeing, um, you know, the foundation for young Australians, for example, did a,
Speaker:a piece of work on under 20 fives and found that that was the most stressed
Speaker:generation they'd ever had in Australia.
Speaker:Now think about that.
Speaker:No war.
Speaker:We haven't had World War I, we haven't had World War ii
Speaker:and we've got rid of Vietnam.
Speaker:And yet this generation was more stressed than the last generations
Speaker:that were going through World War I, World War II and Vietnam.
Speaker:So it's interesting, you know, we, we have created an environment where
Speaker:we're not giving people time, and I think for me, actually getting that
Speaker:balance changed is quite important.
Speaker:Because there are lots of, of spinoffs, I think when you do this.
Speaker:What we see, uh, from our research programs is that, you know, people
Speaker:spend more time with their family.
Speaker:Now that is better family cohesion, probably better educational outcomes.
Speaker:I've got time to read with my kids.
Speaker:They cook more.
Speaker:Now, that means they've got a better chance to eat healthy fresh food
Speaker:rather than grabbing that high salt, high fat, fast food option.
Speaker:We find that they obviously commuting drops now, working from home.
Speaker:Obviously has impacted that too.
Speaker:But if, if you could.
Speaker:Do a four day week in the uk.
Speaker:It has been calculated, I think, by Henley Business School that that
Speaker:would be the equivalent of taking the entire UK private car fleet
Speaker:off the road every year as far as carbon emissions are concerned.
Speaker:So we talk about, you know, how are we gonna get everybody into electric cars?
Speaker:Well, actually, you know what, you don't actually need to, you could have just
Speaker:changed how we worked and you'd have massively reduced the carbon emissions.
Speaker:Now that's not to stop you buying electric cars, but we could have,
Speaker:we can do things in a way that also doesn't impact, you know, productivity
Speaker:doesn't require massive amounts of infrastructure expenditure.
Speaker:You find also that.
Speaker:Health outcomes improve.
Speaker:You know, people who work long hours are something like two or three
Speaker:times more likely to have a heart attack than somebody who doesn't.
Speaker:And if you've got more time off, you've got more time to exercise.
Speaker:So I would argue that if you bring in a four day week, you are effectively
Speaker:rebalancing a wider society.
Speaker:You get all of that for free.
Speaker:The company gets.
Speaker:Well, you've seen higher levels of output, but the country
Speaker:gets all of these benefits.
Speaker:And you, and you know, those benefits are material, and I
Speaker:think run to the heart of the big questions facing society today.
Speaker:So when do you think the inflection point will come?
Speaker:Oh, I think we're past an inflection point, right?
Speaker:So I, I believe, you know, five years ago we were mad, we were
Speaker:mad, we were regarded as mad.
Speaker:Hence why I think, you know, Jim Jeffries thought we
Speaker:were fair game, you know?
Speaker:But now the, we've gone from fringe in terms of discussion to
Speaker:mainstream in terms of discussion.
Speaker:That's, that's quite clear.
Speaker:And all over the world, I was in Saudi Arabia bizarrely just before Christmas,
Speaker:talking to organizations there about how they bring in a four day week.
Speaker:Specifically, the, the challenge they have is the, the highest level
Speaker:of unemployment in any category is graduate educated women, and how
Speaker:do you create a working environment that gets them into the workplace?
Speaker:Think the four day week might do that.
Speaker:So you've got all sorts of reasons all over the world why
Speaker:you different countries might think this is a good idea.
Speaker:But now we've now got governments introducing it.
Speaker:So obviously pilots, government pilots, for example in Spain and
Speaker:Portugal, um, Australia, the Senate Select Committee Work and Care has
Speaker:said we should do a four day week.
Speaker:Um, uh, Shah in the UAE has gone to a four day week.
Speaker:Iceland has, has done it.
Speaker:And one of my favorites, 'cause their videos are really good,
Speaker:is the, um, the city of Golden, um, I think it's Colorado.
Speaker:Uh, their police department went to a four day week.
Speaker:And, you know, their, their crime solving statistics went up.
Speaker:Oh, really?
Speaker:Yeah, probably eating less donuts.
Speaker:Who knows?
Speaker:But
Speaker:So, so andrew, you have a major impact on the world of work?
Speaker:Look, I'm gonna share this story.
Speaker:It's a good anecdote.
Speaker:We were doing the Peeking to Paris car rally a few years ago.
Speaker:We're in the middle of Russia.
Speaker:Phone rings.
Speaker:And our guys from Auckland say you've just been name checked by,
Speaker:uh, Dmitri and Ber dev, the them, the Prime Minister of Russia.
Speaker:He said he's heard about the Perpetual Guardian trial, Andrew Barnes, and
Speaker:he thinks it's the future for Russia.
Speaker:We went, whoa.
Speaker:The phone down, phone ring, phone rings again, and they said, where are you?
Speaker:We said, we're in Siberia.
Speaker:They said, oh, right, okay, phone down.
Speaker:Then they ring back and they said, well, you're going to this city.
Speaker:There will be camera crews from Moscow waiting for you when you get in.
Speaker:And I did three interviews or four back to back covering in oil.
Speaker:And then as we left the country, they announced they
Speaker:were drafting legislation.
Speaker:Now, okay, Russia is not fashionable these days, right?
Speaker:But that was a, you know, a small 300 person business in New Zealand trying
Speaker:an experiment that has now led to bills before Congress, bills before several
Speaker:states, um, in the UK, obviously SMP, Plaid Cymru, Sinn Féin over in Ireland
Speaker:have it as part of their policies.
Speaker:It was, part of, it was part of the Corbyn manifesto.
Speaker:So, okay.
Speaker:It, it's not necessarily all, both sides of the house, but it is getting that.
Speaker:Uh, Australia, both sides of the house have had, uh, a view
Speaker:that they should bring it in.
Speaker:And you're seeing it in everywhere else.
Speaker:Did I ever, in my wildest dreams think that I was gonna be doing this?
Speaker:And I would be.
Speaker:Now, we have a global audience, we think is now about five
Speaker:and a half billion people.
Speaker:We've spoken to companies, media, everything in about 120
Speaker:countries, 125 countries worldwide.
Speaker:And we've been in the Forbes Fast 50, the Time top 50.
Speaker:It's not bad for a, not-for-profit little organization 'cause we do this,
Speaker:because, you know, Henry, um, you don't get many chances to change the world.
Speaker:And for better or for worse, we've been given the chance to change the world.
Speaker:We're on a, we have this own internal goal on, on a campaign to, to
Speaker:create a million years of free time.
Speaker:Now, it's quite humbling when even one of your own employees comes
Speaker:in and, and I, you know, and tells what they've done and then cries,
Speaker:because they never thought we could give them something like this.
Speaker:it's so positive for everybody.
Speaker:I mean, everybody wins.
Speaker:Organizations win, society wins, individuals win.
Speaker:Families win.
Speaker:Why the hell wouldn't we do it?
Speaker:And, and what I get, I get intrigued about is all too often people say,
Speaker:well, you know, it's the usual reaction.
Speaker:You're sitting in a room and somebody says, what do you do?
Speaker:And you say, well, I'm here to talk about the footy week.
Speaker:And they stare off into the middle distance for a bit.
Speaker:And they go, ah, well it wouldn't work in, they thought about an
Speaker:industry will prove it'll not work.
Speaker:My favorite, the favorite was I was in in Wellington in MP's office,
Speaker:and the guy stares in the middle of difference now, and he said,
Speaker:well, it wouldn't work in dairy.
Speaker:And I said, well, why wouldn't it work in dairy?
Speaker:He said, well, cows need milking twice a day.
Speaker:I so liked the crew quote.
Speaker:I put it as a chapter in the book.
Speaker:Ironically, there is now a piece of kit in New Zealand called Holter, that
Speaker:means you can sit in your living room with your mobile phone program, your
Speaker:cows going to the milking shed being milked and back out to the pasture.
Speaker:So yes, you can do it in dairy.
Speaker:You just gotta rethink how you,
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Well, Andrew, that's been great, but can you tell me your three
Speaker:tips for a happy workplace?
Speaker:well, uh, it would be remiss of me if I didn't start off
Speaker:and say the obvious one.
Speaker:It's gotta have four days.
Speaker:I mean, it works, right?
Speaker:So, so, so do that.
Speaker:Uh, the second one, um, now I, I discovered this when I, I first
Speaker:took over my company that nobody is happy if your office roof's
Speaker:letting rain onto computers.
Speaker:So I do think second tip is to make sure that your, your, your,
Speaker:your buildings are watertight.
Speaker:Just saying.
Speaker:But the, the third one, um, is a thing I did right in the get
Speaker:go when I, I took over Perpetual Guardian, which were two very broken
Speaker:companies at the time, is I used art.
Speaker:So I'm a great believer that art, um, that is my, my case,
Speaker:modern art, um, is challenging and at the same time uplifting.
Speaker:And so what we do is all of our offices, whenever we open them,
Speaker:whenever we're we're building something else, is that we find
Speaker:great art and we put it on the walls.
Speaker:Take your mission statement down, and put a challenging piece of art up.
Speaker:Well, thank you Andrew.
Speaker:You have definitely made a difference in the world.
Speaker:Thanks, Henry.
Speaker:Good to talk.
Speaker:What an interesting conversation,
Speaker:indeed.
Speaker:Um, and he was making me smile.
Speaker:I think even his point about having a rainproof, a rain tight building.
Speaker:Yeah, but, you know, look at the schools at the moment.
Speaker:You know, they're, they're, yeah, they're suffering.
Speaker:Um, but I really liked his point about, you know, the art, the creativeness, you
Speaker:know, having great art in his buildings, you know, 'cause sometimes that's
Speaker:the art also provides a challenge.
Speaker:And it just reminded me of Happy because we've got so many different
Speaker:expressions, you know, of where we use art to tell stories and also
Speaker:challenge leadership concepts.
Speaker:So, yeah, I really agree.
Speaker:So.
Speaker:What came up for you, Henry?
Speaker:Well, the key point of the four day week is 100, 80, 100, as he
Speaker:talked about, which is you get a hundred percent of the salary for
Speaker:80% of the time, as long as you are a hundred percent as productive.
Speaker:And in, in the UK pilots, you know, of 61 companies,
Speaker:56 have continued doing it.
Speaker:And you know, I went, I did actually go to university with Andrew Barnes.
Speaker:And I never thought he would do a global, you know, sensation.
Speaker:He would do, he would, he would, he would do anything like that, you know.
Speaker:But, um, yeah, he's, he's absolutely done that.
Speaker:Yeah, it just goes to show how we all can make a difference, you
Speaker:know, no matter how big or small.
Speaker:So, good on Andrew.
Speaker:And let me, let me tell you first of all about our apprenticeship program.
Speaker:The level three team leader, the level five operation director, and
Speaker:level seven, uh, senior leader.
Speaker:And these don't cost you very much at all.
Speaker:Because if you've got the apprenticeship levy, which is, uh, if you've got
Speaker:more than 3 million in salary, you, you pay for it from that.
Speaker:And, uh, the government funds 95% of it.
Speaker:So on the, the, uh, level three team leader, you'll only pay 225
Speaker:pounds for a full 14 month program.
Speaker:there's a bargain.
Speaker:It's an absolute bargain.
Speaker:So check that out.
Speaker:Check it out with, uh, with anybody at Happy.
Speaker:Um, and Maureen over to you.
Speaker:Um, before we go with the apprenticeship, remember we have a
Speaker:special, um, program as well called the Global Majority Program because
Speaker:this is about actually, you know, increasing the diversity at the
Speaker:top level of senior management.
Speaker:So, check that out on our website.
Speaker:And saying that you can find out more information on happy.co.uk
Speaker:and you can find out about our podcast there as well.
Speaker:But please remember to subscribe, to subscribe, shall I say.,
Speaker:Yes, do do indeed.
Speaker:Subscribe to podcast.
Speaker:What do we keep on doing?
Speaker:Creating joy at work, work
Speaker:at work,