The archive · Work & Ways of Doing · Operational decision · 2018
Perpetual Guardian pays five days' wages for four days' work — proven by data (2018)
A New Zealand trust firm ran an eight-week, same-pay four-day-week trial: stress fell 7 points and work-life balance hit 78% — then it became permanent.
Perpetual Guardian
What it had to solve
Andrew Barnes, founder of New Zealand trustee company Perpetual Guardian, believed employment agreements measured hours rather than output, and that this mindset held productivity down. In 2018 he turned that belief into a company-wide experiment: 240 staff working four eight-hour days, paid for five, with each team given a month to decide how to keep service levels up.
How it works
Andrew Barnes ran Perpetual Guardian, a New Zealand firm managing trusts, wills and estates, and he was bothered by an assumption embedded in employment law: that work is measured in hours. New Zealand workers put in long hours by OECD standards, yet productivity lagged, and Barnes argued the country was 'focusing on the days' instead of what those days produced. So he proposed testing the opposite idea — four days' work for five days' pay — as a formal company experiment.
The trial was designed to be measurable, not symbolic. All 240 employees worked four eight-hour days from March 5, 2018 for eight weeks, at full pay. Teams spent the preceding month deciding how they would hold service standards: automating manual processes, running shorter and more focused meetings, and eliminating non-work internet use. Jarrod Haar of Auckland University of Technology and Helen Delaney of the University of Auckland Business School surveyed staff before and after and ran qualitative interviews, while supervisors separately tracked whether performance slipped.
The data said the idea worked: the share of staff who felt they could balance work and life rose from 54% to 78%, stress fell 7 percentage points, and engagement, leadership and commitment metrics all climbed. Performance did not suffer. The qualitative work explained why: employees saw the extra day as 'a gift and a privilege, not a right,' felt goodwill toward the company, went the extra mile, and even stayed available on their day off.
The study gave Perpetual Guardian's board the confidence to make the four-day week permanent from November 1, 2018. Because employment law still assumed five nine-to-five days, the policy was implemented through individual annual opt-in contracts in which the rest day was legally framed as a gift. Barnes used the platform to argue that the law should reward agreed productivity outcomes rather than hours — and governments in Britain and Australia approached him about the model.
Why it lands
- It treated a sacred assumption as testable: instead of arguing that hours equal output, Barnes ran a trial that measured output directly.
- The preparation month made success credible: teams redesigned work before the clock started, so the trial tested focus and process, not merely fatigue.
- Independent academics measured before and after, which gave the results the credibility a board needed to make the change permanent.
- The gift-and-privilege framing created reciprocity: staff responded to the extra day with goodwill, efficiency and a willingness to stay available.
- The legal design — annual opt-in, rest day as a gift — showed a radical policy can be implemented inside an employment system built for a five-day week.
What it did
Independent survey data showed staff able to manage work-life balance rising from 54% to 78%, stress down 7 percentage points, and engagement, leadership and commitment metrics climbing, with no fall in performance. Employees described the extra day as 'a gift, not a right' and often stayed available on it. The policy went permanent in November 2018, and the trial's coverage spread across 32 countries, including the BBC, CNN, the New York Times and the World Economic Forum.
What you can take
When a work rule is sacred but unexamined, run it as an experiment: keep pay, give teams time to rethink processes, measure before and after independently — let results, not habit, set the policy.
Since then
Perpetual Guardian's four-day week became a permanent option for full-time staff from November 1, 2018, with each employee renewing their opt-in annually. Barnes continued to argue for employment law that rewards agreed outcomes rather than hours, and said organs of the British and Australian governments had approached him about the model. The trial's coverage across 32 countries — BBC, CNN, the New York Times and the World Economic Forum among them — made Perpetual Guardian a reference point in the global debate over shorter working weeks.
Sources
- 4-day work week is a success, New Zealand experiment finds
- Four-day week becomes permanent at Kiwi company
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