Employee manual
30 hours. 5 day work week. Experiment 2026
Purpose
With the experiment it is our hope that we will all feel a more stable energy and focus. That we can provide a higher quality per hour when we are at work. That we will all feel more resilience around the ordinary chaos of family life when we are at home. That we will experience better wellbeing in general.
⛳️ Corner flags ⛳️
- Five working days.
- Six working hours per day.
- Synchronized work with a common start between 8:00 and 9:00.
- A shared lunch break.
Timeframe and milestones
The experiment starts 1 September, and ends 31 December.
- Experiment starts 1 September
- Monthly surveys in Zoios
- Halfway Retro & finetuning with all of Abtion. 21 October
- Evaluation & Decision Week 51-52. We will either:
- rollback to a 4DWW
- continue with a 5DWW or
- adjust into something else.
- Experiment ends 31 December.
- Back to work 4 January
Evaluation criteria
We’re not going on vibes. Three areas, tracked from day one, with numbers already pulled before we started, so we can tell the difference between “this feels different” and “this is actually different.”
- Wellbeing and employee votes
- Welbeing. Higher than Q2 2026 (Zoios survey)
- Strain. Lower than Q2 2026 (Zoios survey)
- Sick leave in %. Lower than Q2 (Harvest)
- Experiment survey. General feedback, soft target (Zoios survey)
- All Abtioneers vote to rollback or continue December 2026. Minimum 2/3 say yes to continue. (Zoios survey)
- Client satisfaction
- Client feedback. Gathered in 4-5 interviews December 2026. Soft target.
- Financial performance
- Billability in %. Same or better (Harvest)
Q&A with practical information
Q: Will taking days off, “cost” me more vacation days?
A: For the trial period, vacation days equal 0.8 days during the experiment, so you will not loose any vacation days. If we decide to stick with 5 days, we’ll add extra vacation days to your contracts (ferie/fridage), so that we end up with 6 weeks of vacation per year (as today).
Q: What about doctors appointments, dentists, etc?
A: As today, doctors appointments etc. should be placed outside working hours if possible. If it’s not possible, you can work an extra hour on the same- or adjacent days.
Q: What about Public holidays and short weeks?
A: During the experiment, weeks with a public holiday becomes a 24-hour week.
Q: Does it affect parental or maternity leave?
A: No, it’s still 11 or 15 weeks.
Q: Can we skip lunch to leave even earlier?
A: No, because it is important for our social DNA, and also a good way to get a good long break.
Q: Meetings outside work hours?
A: We should always strive to plan meetings, workshops, etc. within working hours. In some extraordinary cases, workshops with clients might have to go outside our working schedule to fit all calendars. This is by default not compensated with time off (just as now).
Q: What about team days and parties?
A: The Christmas party will be held after a workday (or half workday) on a Friday, and will be optional. There are no team days during the experiment.
Q: What if the halfway retro in October shows that it’s not going well. Will we stop half way?
A: The halfway retro in October is designed to give all of us important learnings, and optimise. The period is fixed: September 1 → December 31. We run the full four months. Stopping before habits settle wouldn’t give anyone honest data, including you.
Q: What if we decide to continue with the 5 day work week, and I don’t want to?
A: First off, we’re doing the five day work week as an experiment intentionally. Nothing is decided yet. But no matter if the outcome is a rollback to a 4DWW, a continuation of 5DWW, or an adjustment of either, we do not want people on different schedules. From a legal point of view, we have given notice of a potential change to a 5-day work week in June 2026. Should you chose to decline you are quarenteed what equals the time of your termination notice from June 2026. After this period, you will have to either quit or accept the new terms.