Retro: Four Day Work Week
How the Overton Window unlocks community strategy and changes policy.
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The recent CNBC piece by Jennifer Liu—along with their new video coverage featuring some dear friends—on the Four Day Work Week continues to make the rounds this week. As the former community strategist for the campaign Liu mentions, I want to widen the lens on how a small team assembled around a petition that’s set to transform thousands of employees’ lives as they pilot a 32-hour work week—because most news outlets are missing the real story. I’m going to discuss how we may have convinced so many people in such little time, and why artists and creatives can use the same strategy.
In January 2021, DSCS was tapped by 4 Day Week Global and Earthshots—an emerging network of tech and digital campaign leaders organized by Kickstarter’s Chief Strategy Officer, Jon Leland—to lead community strategy on a pressure petition to convince 10 companies to actually try it with a low-month pilot in 2022. The concept was simple: the more people actually try a four day work week (32 hours a week for the same pay and benefits), the more companies will witness the positive results and transition into advocates. This forces competitors to stay relevant by copycatting, and soon enough, a ripple effect is born and the Overton Window shifts.
The Overton what?
The Overton Window is a model that helps us understand how policy ideas move from fringe to accepted to reality. A complex set of social norms—influenced by war, media, social movements, the economy, and more—shift the window either toward more or less government regulation. Take LGBT rights: from Stonewall to Gran Fury and ACT Up to Gay Marriage, it took decades of social movements, the ongoing AIDS epidemic, and even a conservative (if not religious) appeal to move public opinion in favor of gay rights. This paved the way for politicians and judges to introduce, uphold, or vote in favor of policies reflecting these shifts, like same-sex marriage and state-level protections for trans people.
U.S. policy on the five day week worked the same way: from Northeastern cotton mill workers in 1908 to Ford in 1929, American public policy implementing the five day work week only went into effect in 1940 after 30+ years of grassroots and business-leader advocacy.
Here’s another way to think of it: politicians don’t decide what becomes policy, public opinion does. The majority of politicians just follow public opinion—because if politicians stake a claim in a policy outside of the Overton Window, they risk being perceived as radical (left or right) and alienating enough people to push them out of power. That means if you shift public opinion, you shift the ability for ideas to move from the radical to the realm of possibility.
Moving the Overton Window on the Four Day Week
For our team’s global petition, we set our community strategy goal with the Overton Window in mind: if we pressure enough CEOs and leaders to actually try a four day week—and in the process turn them into advocates—we’ll start a ripple effect of other business leaders who follow suit. The more employers and employees advocate for a four day week, the more politicians will find it advantageous for their careers to ride the wave and introduce policy that encourages the four day work week.
So how did we do it?
Identify the language, platform, and arguments to convince both the people in power—institutional leaders, HR heads, general counsels, executive directors and CEOs—and the people signing the petition—employees across tech, art, education, medical, blue-collar, and technical industries.
Split our page into arguments for Employers and Employees—feeding two birds with one scone, let’s say.
Hired an illustrator (Rebecca Estrella) and web developer (Jon Saunders) that prioritized soft palates, inclusive skin tones, and straightforward navigation.
Built one-pagers, social copy, and toolkits for our network of over 100 existing 4 Day Week Advocates, business leaders, and think tanks.
Partnered with 4 Day Week Ireland and 4 Day Week UK to deepen our reach in European communities.
The work, well, worked. Within a month of our launch and feature in the Atlantic, our team was tapped by Congressman Mark Takano (D-CA) who now platforms our core arguments in Congress. We published op-eds and hosted nearly a dozen events for interested business leaders, among them Kickstarter, who just started their trial this April alongside 37 other businesses in manufacturing, food, nonprofit, and political organizing.
While time will tell if our 38 core participants will grow into the hundreds, it’s evident to me that the Overton Window on the four day work week has shifted. (You can’t go a day without another organization’s announcement to move to a 32-hour week). That’s why I’m sold on the strategy of moving the Overton Window and will continue to advise policymakers, creatives, and others to consider this framework when building projects that shift our thinking, widen our imagination, and inevitably change our lives.
Gratitude to Jon Leland, Charlotte Lockhart, Andrew Barnes, Joe O'Connor, Colette Kessler, Rebecca Estrella, Jon Steinman, Austin Cole, Kerry O'Brien, Pat Piper, John Saunders, Arjun Mahesh, and Nick Martin.