The four-day workweek experiment run by Fortune contributor Bjorn Reynolds, CEO and Founder of Safeguard Global, did not deliver equal results across his workforce, leading the company to abandon a uniform compressed schedule in favour of what Reynolds calls ‘optionality’.
Reynolds runs a workforce of nearly 1,000 people spread across more than 60 countries. Safeguard Global provides employer-of-record, payroll, compliance and HR services to companies hiring internationally.
He launched the four-day workweek on the premise that staff already operated across different time zones and countries, and that the company had long measured people on outcomes rather than hours. The question, as he framed it, was whether giving people more time back could maintain or improve results for customers and the business.
Why the four-day workweek experiment fell short
For some employees, the answer was yes, and Reynolds says a number still work a four-day week today. But as the trial progressed, a different picture emerged for others.
‘As we listened to our people and looked at how different teams and roles operated, it became apparent that the four-day workweek wasn’t working equally well for everyone,’ Reynolds wrote.
The core problem, he said, was that swapping one company-wide schedule for another did not amount to genuine flexibility. ‘If I tell you exactly when you have to be flexible, that’s not really flexibility,’ he wrote. ‘We’d replaced one schedule with another.’
Reynolds concluded the experiment had posed the wrong question. Rather than deciding how many days people should work, he argued leaders should ask how much choice each individual can be given while the business still meets its commitments.
Optionality: outcome-led working across the workforce
That shift in thinking produced what Reynolds calls ‘optionality’: structuring work around what each role requires rather than imposing a single model on everyone. A four-day week remains available where it suits the role. A five-day week stays open where it does not. The same logic applies to location: Safeguard Global operates predominantly remotely but keeps office and co-working options for those who want them.
Reynolds is clear that optionality depends on accountability. ‘Flexibility only succeeds when people know exactly what they are accountable for,’ he wrote.
To make that work, the company went role by role and defined the outcomes each position must deliver, rather than asking managers to track hours or physical presence. For a customer-facing role, that might mean improving a key relationship, cutting recurring support issues, or lifting customer sentiment. The metric differs by role; the principle does not.
The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development has long argued that outcome-based management is central to making flexible working sustainable, a position Reynolds’s account broadly supports, though his conclusions stem from his own company’s experience.
Reynolds also drew a wider lesson for leadership. Giving employees more freedom, he said, demands greater discipline from managers, not less, because leaders must articulate clearly what success looks like rather than using desk time as a proxy.
‘That’s a much healthier management conversation than trying to dictate when someone needs to be in front of their computer,’ he wrote.
He acknowledged the pivot explicitly: ‘As a CEO, I don’t consider changing an approach a failure. The failure would be sticking with something simply because it was decided that was the answer.’
Some Safeguard Global employees continue to work a compressed four-day week, meaning the trial has not been scrapped entirely but is now one option among several rather than the company-wide default.
