Company 5-hour workday business schedule test - I adapted my company to the 5-hour workday and the business first skyrocketed, but then we were about to go bankrupt.

Just over 5 years ago, I announced to my team of 7 that we were going to try something new: the 5-hour workday. Employees would start work at 8 a.m. every day, and their departure was marked at 1 p.m. No conditions, no questions.

The initial surprise quickly faded and we all adapted to the new day. Our business was going as well as ever, and yet my workers spent less than two-thirds of the hours they had spent before.

Company 5-hour workday business schedule test

To me, this made a lot of sense. I have always believed that a few hours of very concentrated work were much more valuable than a whole day without results.

My company, Tower Paddle Boards, is specialized in providing people with the equipment they need to live active and adventurous lives, so it made sense to give my employees more time so they could do the same for themselves. So, I implemented a system that incentivized high levels of productivity.

It's what I had been looking for years for my company, so I closed the matter. But I wasn't. A year after implementing the new day everything was going well. However, there were many voices outside my company who did not seem to agree with our model.

The news that there was a company that had installed the 5-hour working day was received in different ways, from confusion to skepticism, to absolute disdain.

They gave me all kinds of lessons about how my model might not work in the long run, how most companies would fail under the same conditions, and they predicted a lot of pessimistic things. Now, 5 years later, who's right?

Company 5-hour workday business schedule test

I'm gonna start with the worst we did. We were forced to abandon the 5-hour working day just two years after implementing it. Our company had gone through difficult times, we had some unexpected employee casualties and I was no longer sure the idea was so good.

I thought that with such a short day I would fix my employees, but 3 left for different reasons just over a year and a half after I implemented this measure. While I initially saw some positive signs related to productivity, the reality is that revenues began to decline after a year of being in force. And it was something that happened for the first time in the history of the company.

I continued to maintain the 5-hour working day, but only from June to September. This adapted model seemed to work quite well at first. Tower was still losing revenue, but my employees were satisfied with the commitment we had made to them for the summer. The concentrated summer hours gave me time to work on other initiatives aimed at diversifying the business, which was in decline due to the e-commerce situation.

As if that were not enough, then there was an accounting error that caused a year of very harsh consequences. And just as we saw the light at the end of the tunnel, came the COVID-19 pandemic.

The losses we had been carrying led us to bankruptcy. We had recently invested in an event space that now had no other purpose than to consume resources.

Company 5-hour workday business schedule test

The pandemic did not simply mean that I might have to end the 5-hour day, but that my entire business was heading into the abyss.

The first half of 2020 meant seeing Tower on the ropes completely, so I decided to eliminate the 5-hour day that summer.

Fortunately, when summer finally arrived, things changed. As people were looking for ways to go out and do activities that respected social distancing, the diversification we had begun, entering the e-bike sector, began to bear fruit.

Bikes grew in popularity and our balance sheets stabilized, so I was able to afford to return to the 5-hour day, but with one adjustment: linking it to performance.

Every year my team grows revenue over the previous year they will have a 5-hour working day the following year during the months of August to November. In this way, productivity is encouraged with rewards for a job well done.

Company 5-hour workday business schedule test

From any point of view, the reality is that the 5-hour day model was what saved my company. It may sound strange, given that we had to put aside the idea of doing it all year long, but the extra time offered by the reduced schedule allowed me to expand the company to other places, which I would not have otherwise achieved.

The income we have from electric bikes is the main reason why Tower is profitable today. If I had spent more than 40 hours a week thinking only of surfboards ,would we still be afloat?

No two companies are alike and no working model will work perfectly everywhere. The 5-hour workday may not have been perfect at Tower from the start, but the analysis of the situation and the changes made it work.

For me the key thing is that we make sure we don't break the promise of having a 5-hour day. The intention has always been to achieve maximum satisfaction and well-being for my workers. I made the decision based on what I thought was best for my team and the company's productivity.

I hope that our example will serve to inspire other companies to implement even more ambitious labour policies that improve the lives of workers.

Stephan Aarstol is one of the winners of the American Shark Tank program and CEO of Tower (where Mark Cuban is an investor), and is also considered by many to be the inventor of the 5-hour workday.