A similar bill was introduced in the middle of the pandemic in June 2021. The bill died after it was referred to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.

The continuation of this year's efforts appears to be even more difficult as Republicans have control of the House.

As lawmakers continue their push to shorten the workweek standards, some credit unions have taken it upon themselves to adjust work schedules to meet the needs of employees, while hopefully improving the culture inside the credit unions.

Coincidentally, in March of this year, the Eugene, Ore.-based Oregon Community Credit Union (OCCU) announced it had begun a four-day workweek pilot program for its 61 employees working in the credit union's inbound Member Contact Center.

OCCU is a $3.4 billion credit union with 264,849 members.

Tracey Keffer

At the time of the pilot launch, the credit union's COO, Tracey Keffer, explained that team members would work four eight-hour shifts and be "compensated at a rate equivalent to what they would have been paid for five eight-hour shifts." The extra day off each week will allow "for additional time with family, to attend to appointments and generally decompress from a traditionally stressful role."

Keffer added, "We're excited to see if the four-day workweek is the right fit for OCCU. Our hope is that stepping outside the traditional workweek schedule and seeking innovative solutions will result in a positive impact to our team members' well-being and create a positive and engaging workplace culture. This new model has the potential to boost employee health and engagement, decrease turnover, increase productivity and, as a result, provide the best experience possible for our members."

According to OCCU officials, they are monitoring the following call center metrics for the pilot program:

• Abandonment rate;
• Time to answer;
• Average queue time (percent of time in queue compared to percent of time scheduled to be in queue); and
• Employee absenteeism and turnover ratios.

CU Times reached out to OCCU for any updates or data collected by the credit union three months into the four-day workweek pilot project. A spokesperson for OCCU said there were not any updates yet as "we're still in the middle of our pilot program. Once it's complete, we'll dig into the data for our performance metrics to see if this is something we can consider adopting for the long term."

Once CU Times published the initial story about OCCU's pilot program, the editorial team witnessed an incredible amount of interest from credit union industry leaders.

Besides OCCU, CU Times found one other credit union that has changed its approach to employee well-being as it relates to employee scheduling adjustments coming out of the pandemic.

Situated in the small town of Johnson City, Tenn., the $32.7 million Beacon Financial Credit Union is several months into what officials call a 4/10 schedule. According to the credit union's COO, Danielle Brooks, 15 employees working in Beacon Financial's three branches work four days each week for 10 hours.

Brooks said the credit union's leadership team met last year to find ways to be more efficient, improve employee benefits and try to offer a better work-life balance.

Once the 4/10 idea was presented, Brooks initially had some reservations. "That was something where at first I was like, 'That's not going to work.'"

Once Brooks thought through what a 4/10 schedule would look like and polled her employees on the idea (all but one employee was in favor), she saw that service to the credit union's 2,252 members wouldn't be impacted.

"So we pursued going that route and it was implemented at the end of last year," Brooks said. "We had a couple of hiccups with scheduling and things, but we worked through that and it's something that the staff, the team loves and I don't think they would ever go back!"

For organizations like Beacon Financial that have shifted to a four-day work week during the pandemic, most have fully embraced the schedule and have no plans of returning to a five-day workweek.

In 2022, 33 companies in the U.S., Australia and Ireland took part in a six-month pilot project where employees worked a four-day, 32-hour workweek with no cut in pay. The pilot was created by the 4 Day Week Global nonprofit group in New Zealand.

According to the results of the pilot program, officials with 27 of the organizations said they were not going back to a five-day workweek, as employees reported being much happier at their jobs and they saw an average revenue increase of 38%.

Like the international study results, Brooks has also seen, through regular anonymous employee polls, overall positive results for everyone at the credit union.

"I know that the culture has [positively] increased," Brooks said. "The staff are definitely happier. They like having that time off. They can use that time for, obviously for whatever they want. I know that some of them take advantage of scheduling their personal appointments during those days off. So they get to save their sick days and vacation days. So that's another thing too. They don't have to utilize those days as much because they know ahead of time what their off day is going to be, and then they schedule appropriately."

Brooks also said regular membership surveys have found that none of the credit union's metrics have dropped since implementing the 4/10 schedule.

When asked if the smaller size of the credit union aided the implementation of the 4/10 workweek policy, Brooks said, "I'm sure that has something to do with it. It would probably get a little more tricky with bigger credit unions. There are obviously more working parts there, but I feel it's definitely doable if you want to take the time to figure out how it would best fit for your credit union."

When asked about the OCCU pilot program, Brooks said she believes OCCU is a good example of how larger credit unions can take on a project like a 4/10 schedule or other variants, and hopes more credit unions give shorter workweek schedules a try.

"Oh, I would definitely encourage them to consider it! Just for the simple fact that I believe their employees would really appreciate that work-life balance and it makes for happier employees. Happier employees offer better member service, better production – all of those things that credit unions strive for."

Editor's Note: According to the research group IBISWorld, there are 347,043 credit union employees in the U.S. as of 2023. Between OCCU and Beacon Financial, 76 employees are working a four-day workweek. That's 0.021% of the credit union employee population.