Work Less, Be More Productive with Joe O'Connor
Joe O’Connor
Joe O’Connor is the CEO and co-founder of Work Time Revolution, a global consulting and research firm that specializes in redesigning work models for the age of AI.
He is a globally recognised expert in smart work design, sustainable performance and human-centered AI adoption, and an influential voice on the future of work.
He is the co-author of DO MORE IN FOUR: Why It's Time For A Shorter Workweek, published by Harvard Business Review Press.
Working less and producing more – it sounds counter-intuitive, yet the data suggests it happens, albeit with careful planning. So, what’s really the business case for a shorter week? And is AI the magic bullet to make it possible?
In this entertaining and enlightening conversation, expert and coauthor of Do More in Four: Why It's Time for a Shorter Workweek Joe O'Connor sits down with Alexis and Sally to unpack why a shortened work week truly works. They discuss the historical context of the work week, the necessity of a shorter work week, and the impact of technology and AI on productivity.
Joe emphasizes the importance of addressing busy work and pseudo work, advocating for a four-day work week as a strategic tool for organizations. This wide-ranging discussion also covers the role of AI in shaping the future of work and the need for a cultural shift in workplace expectations.
Key takeaways
The modern work week is a construct from the Industrial Revolution.
Productivity gains have not translated into reduced working hours for many.
AI has the potential to change the nature of work and productivity.
Busy work and pseudo work are prevalent in today's work culture.
A four-day work week can help attract and retain talent.
Implementing a shorter work week requires careful planning and consultation.
AI can help streamline processes and reduce workload.
Cultural norms around work need to shift to prioritize well-being.
Advocating for a shorter work week should focus on mutual benefits for employees and employers.
The future of work will require a balance between technology and human-centered approaches.
Learn more about Joe and his work at Work Time Revolution and purchase Do More in Four.
Watch this great conversation right now!
Transcript
Sally Clarke (she/her) (00:02.222)
Welcome to Live and Work More Human, Jo. It is such a delight to have you with us today. We have so many questions about your amazing new book. And we would like to start by sort of getting a bit of historical context because almost a century ago in 1930, economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that by 2030, technological progress would have so dramatically increased productivity that the average workweek would be reduced to 15 hours.
That is obviously not the case. What went wrong?
Joe O'Connor (00:36.918)
So first of all, it's great to be with you. Definitely a bit of a long time listener, first time caller vibe, having followed the podcast and your work for so long. So what went wrong? I would say maybe just even to back it up a little bit further. We have this construct of the modern work week, which is not something that has been handed down to us by any religious texts or by any scientific principles. It's something that was really in response to
developments around the Industrial Revolution more than a century ago. And so you're right, we had this almost natural trajectory whereby advances in technology and productivity were being met with gradual reductions in working time. And that remained the case really up until recent decades. You've mentioned the prediction from Keynes. Richard Nixon, the US president back in the 1950s predicted that we were on the cusp of a four-day work week. And I think really one of the big
driving factors behind that is the fact that productivity gains being shared with the workforce, it was a much more even split in terms of labor's share of capital gains back up to the 70s or 80s. And so there is a reality that when you adjust it for inflation, many workers today are earning the same as they did before the advent of the personal computer. And they're working the same as people who were around during the invention of the light bulb. And so
I think we had all of these advances, but now as we enter this new age of AI, we feel it's absolutely the right time to be having this conversation once again as to what does or what should the work week look like in response to both today's realities and also tomorrow's opportunities.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (02:28.662)
Amazing. think, Jo, what we hear from a lot of leaders is this kind of tension between seeing gains that AI and other sort of interventions are having in terms of opening up, you know, productivity, that people are becoming more effective and efficient than we were 10, 30, 50 years ago, but that it's not necessarily, that time isn't necessarily then being handed back to people, that there is simply more being expected of people. Is that part of the story too here?
Joe O'Connor (02:57.728)
I think it is, and I think there's also the reality that, you know, for all of the productivity gains that recent technological advancements such as digital collaboration tools and software have brought about, and there's no question that they have made many aspects of our work experience more efficient, they have also made it in many ways more cluttered, more chaotic. They have created a lot of, you know, what we describe as busy work and low value activity.
And so I think that that's also part of the story as to why those gains haven't necessarily translated to any kind of meaningful reduction in the work week. I think for me, and I'm a hopeful, optimistic person by nature, I think the thing that I'm excited about is that if you look at the impact that AI is going to have on work, and I'm sure we will get into this in more depth as we have this conversation, it does seem pretty clear that, you know,
the aspects that AI is over time likely to take over more and more of are things like task speed, task volume, process speed, process volume. And so inevitably what that's going to mean is that human value creation is going to shift much more to what we describe as the more effectiveness dimensions of performance. So being creative, making good judgments and decisions, connecting with people.
And all of those types of traits are not necessarily improved by long hours or by overwork. And in fact, they probably rely much more on well-being, motivation, recovery, rest. So that's my hope is that we have seen, I would say some of the early returns are not super promising. We're seeing some of these technology companies in Silicon Valley who are actually building these tools, demanding their workers to work 9.96 schedules.
you know, nine to nine, days a week. But I feel that over time, as the real impact on work starts to play out, I think we're going to see this need for a different type of leadership, which I know is something that you talk about all the time on this podcast.
Alexis Zahner (05:05.582)
Yeah, absolutely, Joe. it's interesting. I think this word productivity floats around so much right now. And I don't want to dive into it too much right now because we are going to unpack that more. But it's an interesting thing where I think we're still equating productivity to hours sat at a desk or actual inputs from an hour perspective from human beings. Now, something that you speak a lot about, your brand new book is about, and I know you've spent a lot of time researching, is this idea of a shorter work week.
But I'd love to, and I'd love to dive into this a little bit more. Can you help us understand, you just mentioned like this 996, like as people we're working more than ever right now, yet we've got this technology that should be enabling that to not be the case. What is wrong with a five day week or what is wrong with the amount of hours that we are working right now as human beings?
Joe O'Connor (05:57.846)
It's a good question, Alexis, because often we frame this argument for a four-day work week in the context of progress, in that this is the natural, inevitable progression of working life. But actually, if we were to take a little bit more of a pessimistic slant, you could argue that a four-day work week is necessary just to rebalance some of the retrenchment we've had. And so when I talk about retrenchment, I mean specifically two things. Number one,
Alexis Zahner (06:23.385)
Mm.
Joe O'Connor (06:28.137)
The current work week, the five day, nine to five kind of traditional work week that we've become so accustomed to, it was designed for a time when less than 20 % of women were in the workforce. And so it was designed for a mostly single income economy. And so obviously as we've transitioned to what is much more of a dual income economy, effectively the average working hours per household has increased dramatically. And that has created an enormous amount of additional strain and pressure on
family life and social life. Secondly, back when the five day work week was first invented, work was pretty much confined to the place of work. And so when people clocked off at the end of the day, that was typically the end of their work day. We are now living in what Microsoft described as the age of the infinite work day, where work now, you in many ways follows us home. It causes our, you know, the last great wave of technology, which was kind of sold as being something that would liberate us.
For many people, feels like that's the thing that makes our phones buzz at 10 o'clock at night. And so I would argue that a four-day work week, it isn't just about progress, but it's actually about shifting to a model that makes more sense, given those things that have changed over the course of the last century.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (07:45.122)
When you're speaking about the impact of technology, Joe, it takes me back to my time, and this is going to date me. My time as a lawyer when I had a BlackBerry that would have a little red light just peeing every time an email came in. And that little red light came to really symbolize the stress that I was under because it was just going at all hours at all times. And I think that is something that shifted from BlackBerry into iPhone and now is just ubiquitous in our working lives.
And as much as legislation around disconnection, I think is helpful. We're seeing a lot of countries sort of put the onus back on organizations to take the pressure off of people, but it is still very compulsive for us to feel like we, you we'll just check our emails. We'll just get ahead of that. We'll just do this tonight rather than having to deal with it in the morning. And I think it also leads to a lot of this idea of the sort of pseudo work that we get into.
You referred to busy work and in your book, you also speak to sort of pseudo work. love the term. Can you unpack it for us? What is pseudo work? How does it impact us and how can we maybe start to get rid of it?
Joe O'Connor (08:51.957)
Sure, well, I think you've heard me tell this story before, Sally, but for the benefit of your listeners and they can read more about it in the book. Some people, and this might date me as well, but some people might remember the US hip TV sitcom Seinfeld and a very famous character in that, George Costanza. And George basically got a job with the New York Yankees baseball team in an episode of the show and he accidentally locked his car keys in the office car park.
And basically every morning his boss arrived to work and his boss was really an early riser. He was in at the crack of dawn and he saw George's car parked in the car park and he thought, wow, this Costanza guy is really dedicated. He's here first thing every single morning. And then late that evening, his new manager, who was kind of somebody who would really burn the midnight oil and would stay late into the evening again, he noted George's car was still there in the car park and he was marveling at
what a dedicated guy this Costanza guy was. And so while George was actually taking an unapproved vacation, his bosses were thinking about maybe giving him a promotion. And I feel like that story, even though it is maybe 30 years old now, really speaks to a lot of this crisis of busy work, pseudo work that exists in the modern workplace, where actually performative work that's all about activity, availability, responsiveness, is often elevated over
outcomes and achievements. And we saw this in a really interesting study from Atlassian last year, where they found that knowledge workers, two thirds of them, so 65%, almost two thirds, thought it was more important to respond quickly to a message than to make progress on their top priorities. And so I think the four day work week is many things and it is a strategic tool, I think, when it is at its most effective.
And one of the biggest things that organizations who have adopted this have done is use it as a strategic tool to kind of attack that low value activity and that busy work that exists within their organizations.
Alexis Zahner (10:50.936)
Joe, what's so fascinating about that is you've sort of just spoken to this from sort of that management perspective and I've led a team before. So it's really easy to fall into the trap of, you know, seeing people doing what looks like work and conflating that with actually getting important things done. But it's really interesting because as an individual as well and as a knowledge worker, I find myself falling into the trap of more is more where
I might have actually finished everything of value for the day, but there's a guilt associated with maybe wrapping my day up in four or five, six hours and allowing myself downtime because I feel like that's not being productive. If I'm not personally sat at my computer or finding something else to do with that time, I feel guilty about actually taking the rest as well. So I feel like it's actually become such an implicit expectation we have on ourselves as individuals as well.
I just wonder at a personal level for you, Joe, you're a researcher in this, but do you fall victim to that sort of mentality as well sometimes?
Joe O'Connor (11:52.532)
Of course I do. Of course I do. Because I think what you're describing, Alexis, is that this is something that is not an individual guilt issue. And it's also not that leaders and managers are inherently bad people. I mean, it's just something that is culturally hardwired. There was a really interesting study that came out earlier this year, which found, it was from the University of Southern California, and it found that managers and leaders almost universally in the study agreed with this idea.
that allowing people the ability to switch off, to detach from work was a positive thing for their performance in the long run. This was a good thing. But in the same study, they also viewed those same employees as being less committed and less promotable over the long term. And again, I don't think that's because those managers are terrible people or that they're trying to sabotage their own organization. But we have created this kind of cultural norm around these traits of being present.
and being always on and being available. I do think one component of this requires you to make peace with imperfection. You cannot give gold level effort to every single one of your bronze level priorities and expect to still have the energy that's required for your highest value, highest impact.
Alexis Zahner (13:08.269)
That is such an interesting sentence, Joe, giving gold, gold medal effort to bronze level activities. think that for me was just like an epiphany moment of thinking, yeah, why does everything have to be done 110 %? And I think, you from the time we're children, we're conditioned to give our all, all of the time, but without a priority scheduling in there to say, well, what's actually worth that much effort? And I know certainly I fall victim to this still.
all the time. But it's interesting to hear that there's an individual conditioning layer to this and one that's coming at us from that systematic layer as well. Now, Joe, I want to dive more into this four-day work week as a concept. Walk us through it. Can you make the case for the four-day work week for Sal and I here? Why would we transition to this?
Joe O'Connor (13:57.078)
So I think the benefits that we've seen can really be categorized under three main headings. The first is that organizations who successfully manage to adopt a shorter work week have a very unique value proposition in the current market. This is something that in most industries, while it is not nearly as niche as it was pre-COVID, this is still something that can really set you apart when it comes to recruiting and retaining top talent.
And we have many stories in the book, including one from a technology company called Sensi Labs, who really talk about the fact that they are competing with companies like Meta and Amazon and Google for product engineers and software development talent. And they just simply can't compete on the same terms. They cannot compete when it comes to paying top dollar salaries. They can't compete when it comes to the strength of their brand name. And so in order to be able to kind of compete, they need to kind of change the rules of the game by offering something that
that they believe those organizations will not. I think it's something that also can be a very effective tool, particularly in industries which have very intensive work that requires a lot of, you like I'm thinking about family law, I'm thinking about some parts of the not-for-profit industry where the work is very emotionally draining and therefore this can really provide people with that ability to effectively recharge.
And then the third, which I think is probably the most counterintuitive one, is that organizations typically have used this as an incentive for productivity initiatives and technological adoption. And so we know that one of the biggest reasons why these initiatives fail in organizations is because often they lack enthusiastic employee buy-in and engagement. And we also know that we have this phenomenon in many organizations called performance punishment.
that for most of us, we feel like the only reward that we're gonna get for finding new and ingenious ways to do our jobs more effectively is for more work and more tasks to be loaded onto our plate. And so the Shorter Workweek actually provides this life-changing transformative incentive to engage people in those efforts. It really creates this genuine win-win.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (16:14.414)
I love that Joe in part because I had a conversation with my friends from law school. We still have an email chain that's going to this day. And one of us who works in government at the moment was explaining why they were extra busy recently. And we sort of all joked, well, that's just because you're so competent. Stop being so competent. That's the punishment that you're getting for doing everything really well. And they know it. So I think it's a really important point that you make. there's other sort of
limbs to the reasons why we would shift to a four day work week are very compelling. Now, for someone who's thinking, well, this might be an option from my company, particularly, you we don't have perhaps the salary level or the cache that other brands might have in our market. this is a way of us attracting really great talent by offering this powerful sort of lifestyle really. So do we just chop off Fridays? What do we do? How do we approach going to a four day week?
Joe O'Connor (17:10.333)
In short, think 99 out of 100 organizations who march into the office on Monday and announce we're moving to a four-day work week on a Friday are likely to have, if not an outright failure, certainly a very unnecessarily bumpy ride to get there. This is something that, you know, much like transitioning to remote first or hybrid work, this is a new work model that requires a lot of discipline.
a lot of strategy, a lot of thinking differently about productivity within your organization. And I think the other reason why that the big leadership fanfare announcement, we have a story in the book that one of the leaders in the UK who did this talks about where in the pilot back in 2022 that I led, there was one leader who basically had a lot of balloons in the background on a Zoom meeting that we were having, which was to kind of signal the kickoff of the official pilot.
And pretty much all of the other organizations have been doing two to three months of planning, preparation, consultation with their employees, figuring out how to re-engineer work processes. And this guy had the balloons in the background because he was literally getting off the Zoom call to tell his team that they were taking part of this pilot. And they were one of, I think there were 61 companies in that pilot and there were one of four who ended up not sticking with it. And I think you can probably see why.
So this is something that really does require, and it's something that if it's a top-down initiative, if this is about the executive sitting around the table saying, here's what we need to change in order to make this work. One, it's unlikely to be kind of owned by the team and therefore it's going to be much harder to sustain. And secondly, the most detail-oriented leader in the world does not know enough about the day-to-day intricacies of everyone's jobs.
to tell them what they need to do to redesign it. So it has to be bottom up and that takes some time.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (19:11.118)
It's such an important point, Joe, I think that consultation and getting people's buy-in through asking them genuinely what, what, what is this actually going to look like in a nuts and bolts way? Because, and I know we've had conversations around this as well over the years that around it's, you know, that sort of top down sort of order, just this is what we're doing now without really asking people what their day-to-day looks like. Where's the friction? Where's what's going wrong and where can we find more efficiencies? Where can we remove those sort of aspects of pseudo work?
Is there an example, and there's many in the book, but I'd love to hear your favorite example of perhaps a shift to a shorter work week in an industry where you might not necessarily expect that to be even possible.
Joe O'Connor (19:53.344)
So I think one of the interesting stories in the book is in family law. And I think that law is obviously an area close to your heart, Sally. And I think it's one that is certainly more complex than most industries as a result of billable hours, as a result of the culture that exists. I think, you know, not just in terms of the leadership and organizational culture, but I would say, again, when we think about something that's
that's very intrinsic. I think a lot of lawyers kind of associate their professional identity pretty closely with their personal identity. And so it's an industry that actually we find a lot of the challenges can be getting team members to buy into this as much as the leadership. But it's a really interesting story around somebody who, you know, I think wanted to be a shark.
within the legal industry, was not interested in work-life balance and wellbeing. She was an immigrant to Canada. She really wanted to reach the top. She was prepared to kind of put in all of the extra hours and effort to do that. And I think she reached a point where she started to burn out. She started to have migraines. She started to really have this effect of performance. She personally dropped down to four days. It worked wonders for her. She was able to still maintain her billable targets.
And that really was the precursor to her saying, would it be a crazy idea to see if maybe this could work for the entire team and to try that as an experiment. And actually when she did it, she did it with the expectation that billable hours would drop. And that was a sacrifice she was actually willing to make. And what they experienced when they did the pilot was that they did not, that people are actually able to maintain those same billable targets. But it is more complex in that industry. We've worked with manufacturers, we've worked with, you
Lots of organizations for whom I think it is certainly a heavier lift. But I think it might require more creativity and it might require a bigger upfront effort. But I think there are very few scenarios where we can't point to an example or a case study where this has actually been able to be made a success at this point.
Alexis Zahner (22:03.557)
It's a very helpful insight, Joe. And what I appreciate about it is that this idea of just chopping off a work day doesn't consider the nuance of individual industries, of individual workplaces, but also the human beings that you have inside that workplace as well. And sometimes, you know, if you've got a team that perhaps has more parents or less parents or people at different seasons of their life, when we look at some of this nuance, it means we can actually craft.
what a day might look like for an individual or a week might look like for an individual to actually meet some of those needs as well. And I think that's a really important piece of the puzzle. anyone who's tried to drive organizational change at this point, it's just change management 101. If you are not consulting the human beings that you are driving the change for, you should not be in change management or driving these initiatives. That is just like fundamental 101. So,
Joe O'Connor (22:54.804)
Right.
Alexis Zahner (22:58.599)
Just a gentle reminder for everyone listening, talk to people who you are about to push change onto. It's pretty key. Now, Jo, something you did mention earlier, obviously AI is something that's front of mind for all of us. You cannot open an email, a computer screen, an Instagram scroll or anything right now without AI being somewhere in front of your face. What role do you think AI is going to play in the shift to a four day work week?
Joe O'Connor (23:24.821)
So I'll start with the obvious one. Most organizations that have successfully implemented shorter work weeks have to a lesser or greater extent used technology to automate certain tasks and to streamline administrative processes. And that was long before generative AI exploded onto the scene a couple of years ago. So obviously the scope and the potential for AI to unlock the capacity that is required to move to a shorter work week.
has exponentially increased and we believe is going to continue to do so in the years ahead. However, as we've discussed earlier in the conversation, that in and of itself is not enough for us all to assume that people like Bill Gates who are pontificating that we're gonna get to a three-day work week and who are making people like me seem almost like a conservative, I don't think we can assume that let's wait around for the billionaires to make it happen. It's obviously much more complex than that.
And so I think the other roles that it can play is, one, we are seeing in the data a huge amount of resistance in organizations to AI. A recent study that just came out in the last week from Boston Consulting Group, which was reported in Harvard Business Review, it found that 76 % of executives thought that their employees were enthusiastic about AI adoption. Only 31 % of the actual individual contributors. So that's a
two and a half times perception gap, which is pretty extraordinary. It's not just that the leaders themselves were enthusiastic, they believed, three quarters of them believed that. So I think there's a role there for a shorter work week, much like we described earlier as something that can create this shared benefit, this win-win that can bring employees on board with the journey. I also think that this is something that's gonna need to become more and more of a policy issue in the years ahead. I think about how, you
there is a choice that many organizations are facing. They can either invest the gains of AI in the workforce and say, are going to try to create more value with the same headcount, or they can choose to use it to cut costs and say, we're going to try and create the same amount of value with less people. And obviously the latter is something that if you are in this cycle of being fixated on short-term balance sheets, many leaders end up choosing.
Joe O'Connor (25:48.15)
And I do think that thinking about from a policymaker perspective, how can we incentivize organizations to choose the other route? And I actually think that this is something that, you know, if you take the, the U S context can kind of reach across the line, reach across the aisle between red and blue states, that this is not a left or a right issue. You know, this is an issue around protecting employment, protecting the tax base, and also protecting social cohesion. Because I think.
A lot of the political instability that we've seen in the last number of years can be attributed to people feeling left behind by the last great advances in digitalization, globalization. And so I think we need to be very careful that we don't make the same mistakes with AI. And for that reason, think something that for me has been mostly an enterprise consulting issue over the last number of years, I think is going to increasingly become a political and a policy issue.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (26:45.106)
I'm so glad you mentioned that, Jo, because I think it is something where we can kind of see these different layers coming into it, that organisations have a role and corporations taking a stance and making this shift towards giving that value back to their people and taking a longer term view than just the quarter to quarter sort of balance sheets is going to be really key. And we're already seeing some examples of that, which is amazing. And I think where we can see policy regulation and sort of, you know,
politicians across the spectrum of politics also seeing that this is actually genuinely in the interests of society. It makes me think of some of the legislation that we've already seen around disconnection, around social media use, these kinds of things, where we're seeing that there is such a negative impact on individuals and as a result our society is that this is a really powerful tool that can be used. So it's really great to hear you speak to that and I think inspiring to know that these conversations are being had. And I think
It's also something for listeners right now who are sort of thinking in their own terms for their own experience. This is something that would actually be really beneficial for my organisation. I can see that we actually might need to head in this direction, but they know management is going to be resistant. What would you suggest as kind of a first step for these people? If you know that there's going to be quite a traditional mindset that you're meeting, what is the very first thing? Where do you start on that journey?
Joe O'Connor (28:15.135)
So there's a whole chapter in the book on advocating for a shorter work week, which kind of has a six step guide for employees who are looking to kind of surface this within their workplace. A few of the quick tips that I would kind of extract out from that is, first of all, position this conversation in the terms that will appeal to the employer. So I talked earlier about some of the benefits of this in terms of incentivizing adoption of new technologies and productivity.
Alexis Zahner (28:19.31)
Yep.
Joe O'Connor (28:44.211)
I talked about, you know, solving problems with employee burnout or with turnover or, you know, sick leave and absenteeism. I talked about recruitment or retention. So figure out what are the challenges that your organization is looking to solve. so positioning the shorter work week against that backdrop that this can actually be a strategic tool to solve those problems, is a really good way to come at this. think also embracing conditionality, kind of looking at this and saying,
We understand that in order for this to be successful and sustainable for the organization, it's going to require, you know, us to achieve certain goals, us to kind of maintain certain standards, us to meet certain targets. And so actually coming into the conversation saying, we're not looking for this purely as a perk or a benefit or a concession. We believe that this is something that can be good both for the employees and for the organization. Again, it's just much more likely to elicit a response from, from
from leadership, that's one that's open rather than closed minded. I would definitely say do your research on what other organizations have done this within similar types of work or industries to you. And also don't do it on your own. So kind of talk to your colleagues, maybe get a group of people together who will kind of work on this issue. Ideally people from different teams, different departments, because just thinking about it in terms of your own role probably won't be enough. You'll need to actually consider.
What are the intricacies of how this might work for different parts of the organization? And so if you've got kind of a working group of people that's representative of different roles within the organization, immediately your case is going to be much, more strengthened.
Alexis Zahner (30:30.421)
Super helpful points there, Joe. And I think I really like this idea of building a business case around it being a mutually beneficial thing, because I think there often seems to be this fear that going back to the technological piece, that if we do use something like AI or technology to reduce overall work hours, that my job will be at threat versus the other side of it is sort of, you know, from an organizational perspective, it's like, well, why would we invest this time and money into giving people their time back?
but what is the benefit to us as an organization? So I like this sort of meeting in the middle of it can have individual and well, it does have individual and organizational benefits. And it's almost how we, if we're the leader or the middle manager or the person trying to push for this change, it's really in how we communicate the benefits of this to our organization so that they can see how this change is actually gonna bring about a better organization for everyone involved.
Joe O'Connor (31:27.561)
Absolutely, I think that that's really critical. And I often joke with colleagues of mine that we've made a career making the business case for good things. Sometimes it feels icky to make the business case for humanity. But that is the reality of the world that we live in for most people. And so I think coming at it from that perspective,
Sally Clarke (she/her) (31:42.158)
You
Joe O'Connor (31:56.096)
When I do think that we have, like, even if you take the conversation that we just had about AI, the reality is that individual employees who are purely thinking about the impact of AI in the context of what my job is today and what my tasks are today and how can I become more efficient in doing those tasks, I'm not sure that that is going to be, you know, is going to be the thing that kind of protects you in the long run.
because AI is going to change so much about the systems of work, the architecture of work. So actually it's going to be much more about how do I use AI to become irreplaceable in the future rather than to become better at the things that I'm currently doing. And the same is true at an organizational level. If you've got people who are only thinking about AI in the context of what jobs am I going to continue to do versus what jobs is AI going to take over, you're not really moving to thinking about
of advantage, new value, solving problems. But the reality in most organizations is that people are so fearful about job loss and about, and this is where I think that there is such a strong business case for taking a human-centered approach and for investing this in the workforce, because those organizations that have psychological safety, that people actually feel, I have agency over, you know, what's going to happen rather than needing to feel anxious and fearful about it.
Those are going to be the organizations that come up with actually, what's the new opportunities that AI can create for us? And so I think there really is a very compelling case to be made there.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (33:33.07)
It really echoes a lot of our thinking around this, Jo, because I think for a long time we had this belief that we sort of have to trojan horse anything that's actually good for human beings into these sort of capitalist corporate environments. And now there's such an abundance of research to show that that's actually not necessary to sort of sneak these policies in. These policies align with improved outcomes for the organization itself. I think as long as we're...
operating in this kind of economy that we're currently in, we will need to make the business case and the business case really is that win, win, win for four day weeks, for shorter work weeks and so many other human centered initiatives. Now we could talk to you all day and night about this topic, Joe, but we'd love it if you would leave us with your insights. We're having this conversation early 2026. Imagine it's 2036. Where are we at with the adoption of a shorter work week? And if you have any other
predictions, prophecies about perhaps AI, feel free to unleash.
Joe O'Connor (34:33.973)
I mean, I'm very concerned about making prophecies because as I said, I'm an optimist and I think often maybe I am in my own little optimistic bubble where I think about the impact of AI on the individual and I can see a lot of positives. think about it at an organizational level. I see a lot of positives. I probably get worried when I zoom right out and I look at the macro picture and I look at how there is this concentration of power. I look at how deregulation seems to be winning the day.
but I'm not going to go down that route. I'm going to say that to me that the big hope and the big opportunity here is that AI is real benefit is not going to be about speed up. It's not going to be about turbo charging. It's going to be about actually resolving some of the issues that we've created in recent decades around clearing away some of the chaos and the clutter. You know, AI being about people doing fewer higher impact things better.
rather than doing more things at less time. I've spent years helping companies do a four day work week. And in the pre-AI age, that really was about doing more and less time. We were effectively needing to make the case that even if we reduce people's hours, people are going to be able to produce more. And that inevitably meant that's going to work for some organizations, but it may not for others. And I think one of the big hopes that I have is that AI really expands that conversation because
it now becomes less about doing more and less time and more about really zeroing in on the things that matter the most. So that's my real hope for where both the AI conversation and the shorter workweek movements are going to be headed in the decade ahead.
Alexis Zahner (36:18.752)
Joe, it's such an optimistic note to finish on. Thank you so much for today's conversation on live and work more human. It has been such a privilege to sit down with you today.
Joe O'Connor (36:29.078)
Thanks, it was great to join you.
