A CEO laid out the exact impact of a 4-day week on his staff. They enjoyed work more and spent time cooking, learning skills, and visiting family.

• US games studio Armor Games switched its eight staff to a 32-hour work week.
• CEO John Cooney mapped out how his employees spent their extra time in pie charts.
• Staff reported spending their extra day off doing chores that usually eat into the weekend.

The CEO of a company that switched to a four-day week said that staff spent their extra day off with loved ones, learning new skills, and cooking.

John Cooney is the boss at US-based games studio Armor Games. The company switched to a 32-hour work week last month, he said.

In an eight-tweet thread Cooney shared pie charts showing “early positive results” of the trial.

“Our team overwhelmingly likes the 4-day workweek format,” he wrote. “Not wildly surprising but the team holds their own high bar for quality/work, and the pressure of 4 days work instead of 5 can be its own kind of adjustment/stress. Regardless 100% of the team enjoys the 4-day workweek.”

Workers felt that they enjoyed work more and that they were achieving just as much compared to a traditional five day work week, he said.

He also shared how they were spending their time off: Namely freeing up their weekends by doing chores and spending more time with loved ones.

-John Cooney (@jmtb02) November 3, 2021

He did say that there had been some challenges however.

Cooney said that QA cycles – which stand for quality assurance – felt much less flexible. He also said that the company was still measuring how a compressed workweek affects stress. Some staff reported having to work some hours on their free Fridays “due to the rest of the world still at work.”

After unanimous staff agreement, the trial will be extended to December 31.

A growing number of companies are experimenting with reducing their working hours, which has been hailed as an antidote to overwork and poor work-life balance. The concept – most commonly labelled as a four-day week – can come in many forms, but the basic premise is to reduce working hours with no overall loss in pay.

In October, the CEO of Canadian games studio Eidos Montreal announced that staff would be switching to a four-day week. Head of studio David Anfossi said that shortening meetings would be way one to help staff make the transition.

David Newick, the CEO of Arken Legal, told Insider that despite some teething problems, wellbeing improved among his staff after making the switch.

Workers who took part in well published trials in Iceland, told Bloomberg news that they had to increase their hours after initially cutting their hours too much.