Changing gears: Cleveland manufacturers trial four-day week

A minor revolution in the world of work is unfolding at a company 20 miles north-east of Cleveland.

Here, workers at Advanced RV are talking about what they’ll do on their Friday off. Others are discussing how they’ll spend Monday: potter around at home, hang out with their kids or run some errands – anything but show up for work.

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Advanced RV, a company that customizes about 24 high-end recreational vehicles a year, introduced a four-day work week in 2022 to see if working fewer hours could make for a happier, more productive staff.

“The upside was huge,” the company founder and owner, Mike Neundorfer, recalled recently.

“I thought that the probability that we’d be successful was less than 50% – but that the outcomes and implications for the people that work here were unbelievable.”

Neundorfer expected to see a 20% hit on profit for a couple of years due to the loss of an entire workday. Instead, as the company enters its third year of four-day work weeks, it’s doing better than before.

“In that first year we were probably at 96% efficiency that we had before,” he says.

“We’ve gained another 4 or 5% since then.”

The move to improve his staff’s working experiences is happening at a time of dramatic change for US manufacturing, an industry that for over a century has been built on the idea that productivity correlates directly with the number of hours spent on the job.

Vehicle battery plants in Ohio, Michigan and Kentucky – and semiconductor factories in upstate New York, Arizona, Texas and Ohio – are fueling a new wave of industrial reshoring into the US’s manufacturing sector, in large part thanks to the Joe Biden White House’s Chips and Inflation Reduction acts.

The shift has led to a growing demand for workers that, in turn, is seeing companies being asked to better accommodate their staff in a host of ways.

Last September, United Auto Workers officials pushed – albeit unsuccessfully – for a four-day work week for members during negotiations with the Ford, General Motors and Stellantis auto manufacturers. Meanwhile, companies seeking $150m or more in Chips Act funding are required to submit detailed childcare plans for construction and permanent staff working at their facilities.

“There is a very broad set of labor market pressures that are not only putting [better working schedules] in the minds of workers but forcing companies to do whatever they can to secure manufacturing talent,” said Mark Muro, a senior fellow at Brookings Metro, an economic thinktank.

“The four-day work week is a signal of the kind of flexibility and creativity that’s going to be needed to keep [manufacturing] plants humming.”

A UK report published in February 2023 found that companies trying out four-day work weeks – Advanced RV being one – reported that 46% of them experienced an increase in productivity. The non-profit 4 Day Week Global, based in Auckland, New Zealand, says it has worked with more than 200 companies around the world, creating 2,431 years of free time as a result.

Most companies offering a four-day work week are technology- and online-centered, and they can operate without staff being physically present at the worksite.

But while Advanced RV and its staff of about 50 people have succeeded in maintaining production levels on a reduced timeline, observers say other, larger manufacturers are facing a host of labor and logistical challenges.

“We’re seeing significant upticks in manufacturing activity, more hiring going on in a fairly tight labor market,” says Muro.

“It’s going to be challenging to keep lines running. Companies are going to have to make sure that they are extremely welcoming to workers.”

Several reshoring projects have been beset with supply chain and other problems that were a feature during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. Consumers are balking at rising vehicle prices, resulting in thousands of new cars lying idle in storage and plans for new manufacturing plants being put back.

Neundorfer admits that it may have been easier for his company to pivot since he is the only shareholder and runs Advanced RV himself, meaning decision-making is a more straightforward process. However, he thinks a four-day work week for the wider manufacturing industry isn’t impossible.

“How long did it take to get the 40-hour week?” he said. “It was decades.

“A lot of companies are so deep in a culture of time – there are time clocks … people don’t have the flexibility to take time off or go to the doctor. I think the biggest shift is going to be towards productivity and quality focus.”

When the concept of a four-day work week was presented in 2022, about half of Advanced RV’s staff feared taking part would only serve to increase their stress loads.

One of them was Dave McArthur, a metal fabricator.

“I was really skeptical,” he said.

Today, he spends his Mondays working in his garage at home, doing yardwork or getting his truck serviced. “Sometimes I don’t do nothing on Mondays,” he says. “Just decompress.

“It’s been great. I never thought it would have kept going [but] things just started clicking together,” he said of the new work culture.

“But it doesn’t just happen – you have to put effort into it.

“We did a lot of changes here – we are better organized; we talk more with everybody; there’s a lot of cross station work – planning is a big thing.”