‘A game-changer’:

Pend Oreille workplaces go four-day

NEWPORT — Michaela Hendershott needed more time.

About three years ago, Hendershott was the mother of a young child, and getting ready to have her second. She worked for Jason Earl Insurance Agency in Newport — and loved it — but needed more time to raise her family than her job at the agency gave her.

Then, Hendershott was offered another job where she could work 10 hours a day, three days a week. But that job was in Sandpoint.

“[Hendershott] was like, ‘I really like my job here. I don’t want to leave, but I gotta have another day a week,’” said Jason Earl, who owns Jason Earl Insurance Agency.

So, Earl decided to make a switch. Jason Earl Insurance Agency went from a five-day work week to a four-day one, giving Hendershott — and the agency’s two other employees — another day off.

“It’s a game-changer,” Hendershott wrote in an email.

Jason Earl Insurance Agency is not the only Pend Oreille River Valley workplace on a four-day week. Besides the Selkirk, Cusick and West Bonner County School Districts, others include the Pend Oreille Public Utility District and Kalispel Tribe of Indians.

All switched from a five-day week, for similar reasons: work-life balance and employee recruitment and retention.

“Employee attitudes, they’re better, they’re happier,” Earl said.

PUD has also seen improvements in employee attitudes.

The district switched to a fourday week last summer, but public information officer Joe Hathaway said conversation around doing so had been going on “for quite a while.” Inland Power & Light Company in Spokane County, Kootenai Electric Cooperative in Kootenai County and other public utility districts in Washington had been making the switch.

This prompted senior management to conduct an internal survey last spring. Of the 72 employees who responded, 67 — over 93% — supported a four-day week.

“That was kind of the catalyst,” Hathaway said.

Four-day work weeks, Hathaway said, are trending among “a lot” of companies. He cited better work-life balance, improved morale and, above all, employee retention.

“We want to bring the best and the brightest and the highly trained staff to want to work here at Pend Oreille PUD,” Hathaway said.

Though not a company, the Kalispel Tribe switched to a fourday week in the early 1990s and was one of the first in Pend Oreille County to do so.

The Tribal government wanted to provide employees with more time and flexibility to attend to personal matters, principal publicist Donna Molvik wrote in an email. They have used their Fridays off to spend more time with family and travel to cultural events like powwows across the region.

“You try to create scenarios to keep [employees],” Earl said.

And the four-day workweek helps Jason Earl Insurance Agency with staffing issues, Earl said. With only three employees, just one taking a day off to go to a medical or other personal appointment decreased staff by a quarter. Now that employees make those appointments on Fridays, the agency is fully staffed more often, Hendershott wrote.

Earl himself had been working for the agency six or seven days a week until he got to a point — he did not want to work five days a week, let alone six or seven.

“One of the primary purposes of it was to encourage a work-slash-life balance to try and emphasize that your personal life and your family is really important,” Earl said.

At PUD, the four-day workweek has benefitted not only employees, but also customers. With longer hours Mondays through Thursdays, PUD has customers coming in “all hours of the day,” Hathaway said.

“Providing these longer hours really helps benefit those with different schedules,” Hathaway said. PUD is open from 7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

The longer hours can be a challenge for employees, Hathaway said.

Even so, response to the four-day workweek has been “overwhelmingly positive,” and he has not heard any complaints.

Neither has Earl, who worked five days a week his whole life until about three years ago. Taking Fridays off seemed like a disadvantage to Earl, but he has noticed no such disadvantage in Jason Earl Insurance Agency’s productivity. In fact, Earl said the agency might have increased production. Hendershott seconds that.

“That’s hard to quantify and hard to prove, honestly,” Earl said. “But I’m pretty certain that’s what’s happening.”

As of now, Jason Earl Insurance Agency, PUD and the Kalispel Tribe are continuing with the four-day workweek.

Earl wants to retain the three employees he has now. Finding qualified employees to work at an agency like his, Earl said, is very difficult.

Since she stayed with the agency three years ago, Hendershott has only gotten better at her job, progressing through the ladder. If Hendershott had quit, Earl said he could have replaced her, but not without working six or seven days a week again.

“I know it’s not realistic for every business,” Hendershott wrote. “But I am so grateful I have that extra day to spend time with my family, run errands or just plain decompress.”