SEO
Is The 4-Day Week The Future Of Work? A Q&A With Joe O’Connor
Can spending less time on the clock actually make your team more productive?
Joe O’Connor thinks so. He’s the CEO of 4DayWeek.com, a company aiming to shift our collective mindsets around the traditional 9 to 5, Monday to Friday grind.
It sounds counterintuitive, for sure – and yet many organizations are willing to give it a try.
In fact, Search Engine Journal is experimenting with a four-day workweek right now.
Joe currently leads 4 Day Week Global’s pilot program, and in the first six months of 2022, 150 companies and 7,000 of their employees participated in six-month coordinated trials of the four-day week.
Joe recently joined SEJ Show host Loren Baker in a podcast episode on helping your marketing team succeed inside the structure of a 4-day workweek.
We had the opportunity to connect with Joe after his podcast interview and ask a few more questions about how he grew into this career as a flexible work advocate and agent of organizational change.
Here, he talks about leadership, productivity, and the trends and skills we’ll need to future-proof our careers and companies going forward.
Growing Into The Four-Day Week Mindset
Miranda Miller: What path led you to become the Global Pilot Program Manager and now CEO of 4 Day Week Global?
Joe O’Connor: “In my previous role as campaigns director for Ireland’s largest public service union Fórsa, I organized an international conference on the future of working time back in 2018 and founded and launched the Four Day Week Ireland campaign coalition in 2019.
I’ve been collaborating with 4 Day Week Global’s pioneering founders, Andrew Barnes and Charlotte Lockhart since 2019 also.
When I developed a four-day-week pilot program and research project in Ireland last year, it aligned with their plans to develop a global pilot project and a major U.S. campaign, so I came on board full-time with the organization in September 2021.
At the same time, I moved from Ireland to New York City with my partner and our two cocker spaniels, where I am also leading a research project on work time reduction as a visiting fellow with Cornell University’s ILR School.”
Miranda Miller: Tell us a bit about what you do. How has this work model changed the way you get your own work done?
Joe O’Connor: “I’ve learned a lot from the kind of first-hand exposure I’ve had to a wide range of very different companies who have adopted innovative new work practices, identified process improvements, and embraced new technologies to make their businesses efficient enough to deliver five days’ worth of output in four.
This has not only strengthened my capacity to support leaders to figure out how to make this work for their business but also enabled me to implement these strategies to make our organization as lean and efficient as it can possibly be.
This is a continuous work in progress – the four-day week and smart working is an ongoing fitness, not a one-off decision.”
Miranda Miller: At your leadership level, how is your time split between organizational strategy, people management, and other activities?
Joe O’Connor: “Although we are growing rapidly, we’re still a relatively small organization with quite a flat organizational structure, so I’m still very deeply involved with executing our day-to-day operations and rolling out global pilot programs.
The incredible organic momentum behind the global four-day week movement, particularly in the past six months or so, has meant that we have had to be extremely nimble in responding to this fast-moving space.
In recent months, I’ve been able to dedicate more of my time to proactively charting our future path. We’re building capacity towards our objective of running our 4 Day Week pilot program quarterly in every time zone and region by the second quarter of 2023.”
Productivity, Leadership, And The 100-80-100™ Model
Miranda Miller: Can you share the top two influences shaping how you think about productivity and leadership?
Joe O’Connor: “One of the things that inspired me was my experience with public sector workers in Ireland, where many working parents – predominantly women – told us en masse in a major survey that they had opted to work four-day or reduced-hour schedules after returning from parental leave, for work-life balance and childcare reasons.
However, although they had dropped to 80% of their salary, they still felt that their responsibilities were the same, their role expectations were the same, and their output was the same.
This tells us two things: One, we have a significant gender equality problem in the workplace which a universal four-day week could be revolutionary in addressing.
And two, when it comes to productivity, Parkinson’s Law holds true – work tasks will expand to fill the time available for their completion.
Our founder Andrew Barnes has also inspired me in this regard. The landmark four-day week trial he spearheaded in his company in 2018, Perpetual Guardian in New Zealand, was primarily motivated by productivity.
By shifting the emphasis away from the number of hours spent at the office, at the desk, or on the clock and onto the work being produced and results being achieved, he could deliver better business performance while changing the lives of his employees for the better.
The 100-80-100™ model he pioneered in this trial – 100% pay, 80% time, in exchange for a commitment to 100% output – is now changing the world of work, being adopted by hundreds of companies worldwide with our guidance.”
Setting Your 4-Day Week Program Up For Success
Miranda Miller: What productivity tips can you share with companies looking to make a four-day workweek campaign part of their culture?
Joe O’Connor: “For many companies, the four-day week is already here. It’s just buried under the rubble of wasteful practices and outdated processes, such as a lack of meeting discipline, unnecessary distractions and introductions in the workday, and poor use of technology.
The four-day week can provide a transformative forcing function in your company to address these inefficiencies and powerfully align the company’s productivity motivation with employee motivation for the transformative benefits that an extra day off work can bring.
While leadership needs to be very clear in setting and communicating the direction of travel, including the purpose, objectives, and metrics for the trial, they then need to empower their people to figure out the details.
The most detail-oriented CEO in the world does not know the day-to-day intricacies of the jobs of each of their employees well enough to redesign them.
The greatest and most sustainable productivity gains have been achieved by companies that have adopted a bottom-up approach to implementation, enabling staff to work out the changes to work practices necessary to redesign their work.
Often, some leaders overthink potential problems and blockages in the C-suite instead of asking their people for ideas and solutions.”
Tips For Future-Proofing Your Career & Business
What’s next for the world of work? What key trends/practices that companies need to start embracing, and how can leaders future-proof themselves?
Joe O’Connor: “When we started working with companies to trial or transition to reduced-hour working back in 2019, the primary reasons were addressing productivity issues and burnout concerns.
While both of these remain important, they have been surpassed by recruitment and retention as the single biggest reason why leaders are being attracted to the four-day week.
In a very competitive labor market, innovative and forward-thinking leaders recognize that if they can pull off the four-day week without sacrificing organizational priorities, they can give themselves a very significant competitive edge in the war for talent.
While many companies might not be able to compete in the top 1% of compensation, they can compete in offering among the top 1% of workweeks.
And the greatest benefits will flow for the longest period to the earliest adopters.
Companies like Atom Bank in the U.K. have seen a 500% increase in applications for open job vacancies since moving to a four-day week.
Healthwise, a large not-for-profit here in the U.S. introduced the four-day week last August to combat retention issues and has since seen its unplanned employee turnover reduce to zero.
Leaders now need to ask themselves: Is my greatest risk the risk of trying the four-day week and failing, or is it my biggest competitor embracing this new way of working first and reaping the rewards?”
Featured Image: Courtesy of Joe O’Connor/4 Day Week Global
SEO
HARO Has Been Dead for a While
I know nothing about the new tool. I haven’t tried it. But after trying to use HARO recently, I can’t say I’m surprised or saddened by its death. It’s been a walking corpse for a while.
I used HARO way back in the day to build links. It worked. But a couple of months ago, I experienced the platform from the other side when I decided to try to source some “expert” insights for our posts.
After just a few minutes of work, I got hundreds of pitches:
So, I grabbed a cup of coffee and began to work through them. It didn’t take long before I lost the will to live. Every other pitch seemed like nothing more than lazy AI-generated nonsense from someone who definitely wasn’t an expert.
Here’s one of them:
Seriously. Who writes like that? I’m a self-confessed dullard (any fellow Dull Men’s Club members here?), and even I’m not that dull…
I don’t think I looked through more than 30-40 of the responses. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. It felt like having a conversation with ChatGPT… and not a very good one!
Despite only reviewing a few dozen of the many pitches I received, one stood out to me:
Believe it or not, this response came from a past client of mine who runs an SEO agency in the UK. Given how knowledgeable and experienced he is (he actually taught me a lot about SEO back in the day when I used to hassle him with questions on Skype), this pitch rang alarm bells for two reasons:
- I truly doubt he spends his time replying to HARO queries
- I know for a fact he’s no fan of Neil Patel (sorry, Neil, but I’m sure you’re aware of your reputation at this point!)
So… I decided to confront him 😉
Here’s what he said:
Shocker.
I pressed him for more details:
I’m getting a really good deal and paying per link rather than the typical £xxxx per month for X number of pitches. […] The responses as you’ve seen are not ideal but that’s a risk I’m prepared to take as realistically I dont have the time to do it myself. He’s not native english, but I have had to have a word with him a few times about clearly using AI. On the low cost ones I don’t care but on authority sites it needs to be more refined.
I think this pretty much sums up the state of HARO before its death. Most “pitches” were just AI answers from SEOs trying to build links for their clients.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not throwing shade here. I know that good links are hard to come by, so you have to do what works. And the reality is that HARO did work. Just look at the example below. You can tell from the anchor and surrounding text in Ahrefs that these links were almost certainly built with HARO:
But this was the problem. HARO worked so well back in the day that it was only a matter of time before spammers and the #scale crew ruined it for everyone. That’s what happened, and now HARO is no more. So…
If you’re a link builder, I think it’s time to admit that HARO link building is dead and move on.
No tactic works well forever. It’s the law of sh**ty clickthroughs. This is why you don’t see SEOs having huge success with tactics like broken link building anymore. They’ve moved on to more innovative tactics or, dare I say it, are just buying links.
Sidenote.
Talking of buying links, here’s something to ponder: if Connectively charges for pitches, are links built through those pitches technically paid? If so, do they violate Google’s spam policies? It’s a murky old world this SEO lark, eh?
If you’re a journalist, Connectively might be worth a shot. But with experts being charged for pitches, you probably won’t get as many responses. That might be a good thing. You might get less spam. Or you might just get spammed by SEOs with deep pockets. The jury’s out for now.
My advice? Look for alternative methods like finding and reaching out to experts directly. You can easily use tools like Content Explorer to find folks who’ve written lots of content about the topic and are likely to be experts.
For example, if you look for content with “backlinks” in the title and go to the Authors tab, you might see a familiar name. 😉
I don’t know if I’d call myself an expert, but I’d be happy to give you a quote if you reached out on social media or emailed me (here’s how to find my email address).
Alternatively, you can bait your audience into giving you their insights on social media. I did this recently with a poll on X and included many of the responses in my guide to toxic backlinks.
Either of these options is quicker than using HARO because you don’t have to sift through hundreds of responses looking for a needle in a haystack. If you disagree with me and still love HARO, feel free to tell me why on X 😉
SEO
Google Clarifies Vacation Rental Structured Data
Google’s structured data documentation for vacation rentals was recently updated to require more specific data in a change that is more of a clarification than it is a change in requirements. This change was made without any formal announcement or notation in the developer pages changelog.
Vacation Rentals Structured Data
These specific structured data types makes vacation rental information eligible for rich results that are specific to these kinds of rentals. However it’s not available to all websites. Vacation rental owners are required to be connected to a Google Technical Account Manager and have access to the Google Hotel Center platform.
VacationRental Structured Data Type Definitions
The primary changes were made to the structured data property type definitions where Google defines what the required and recommended property types are.
The changes to the documentation is in the section governing the Recommended properties and represents a clarification of the recommendations rather than a change in what Google requires.
The primary changes were made to the structured data type definitions where Google defines what the required and recommended property types are.
The changes to the documentation is in the section governing the Recommended properties and represents a clarification of the recommendations rather than a change in what Google requires.
Address Schema.org property
This is a subtle change but it’s important because it now represents a recommendation that requires more precise data.
This is what was recommended before:
“streetAddress”: “1600 Amphitheatre Pkwy.”
This is what it now recommends:
“streetAddress”: “1600 Amphitheatre Pkwy, Unit 6E”
Address Property Change Description
The most substantial change is to the description of what the “address” property is, becoming more descriptive and precise about what is recommended.
The description before the change:
PostalAddress
Information about the street address of the listing. Include all properties that apply to your country.
The description after the change:
PostalAddress
The full, physical location of the vacation rental.
Provide the street address, city, state or region, and postal code for the vacation rental. If applicable, provide the unit or apartment number.
Note that P.O. boxes or other mailing-only addresses are not considered full, physical addresses.
This is repeated in the section for address.streetAddress property
This is what it recommended before:
address.streetAddress Text
The full street address of your vacation listing.
And this is what it recommends now:
address.streetAddress Text
The full street address of your vacation listing, including the unit or apartment number if applicable.
Clarification And Not A Change
Although these updates don’t represent a change in Google’s guidance they are nonetheless important because they offer clearer guidance with less ambiguity as to what is recommended.
Read the updated structured data guidance:
Vacation rental (VacationRental) structured data
Featured Image by Shutterstock/New Africa
SEO
Google On Hyphens In Domain Names
Google’s John Mueller answered a question on Reddit about why people don’t use hyphens with domains and if there was something to be concerned about that they were missing.
Domain Names With Hyphens For SEO
I’ve been working online for 25 years and I remember when using hyphens in domains was something that affiliates did for SEO when Google was still influenced by keywords in the domain, URL, and basically keywords anywhere on the webpage. It wasn’t something that everyone did, it was mainly something that was popular with some affiliate marketers.
Another reason for choosing domain names with keywords in them was that site visitors tended to convert at a higher rate because the keywords essentially prequalified the site visitor. I know from experience how useful two-keyword domains (and one word domain names) are for conversions, as long as they didn’t have hyphens in them.
A consideration that caused hyphenated domain names to fall out of favor is that they have an untrustworthy appearance and that can work against conversion rates because trustworthiness is an important factor for conversions.
Lastly, hyphenated domain names look tacky. Why go with tacky when a brandable domain is easier for building trust and conversions?
Domain Name Question Asked On Reddit
This is the question asked on Reddit:
“Why don’t people use a lot of domains with hyphens? Is there something concerning about it? I understand when you tell it out loud people make miss hyphen in search.”
And this is Mueller’s response:
“It used to be that domain names with a lot of hyphens were considered (by users? or by SEOs assuming users would? it’s been a while) to be less serious – since they could imply that you weren’t able to get the domain name with fewer hyphens. Nowadays there are a lot of top-level-domains so it’s less of a thing.
My main recommendation is to pick something for the long run (assuming that’s what you’re aiming for), and not to be overly keyword focused (because life is too short to box yourself into a corner – make good things, course-correct over time, don’t let a domain-name limit what you do online). The web is full of awkward, keyword-focused short-lived low-effort takes made for SEO — make something truly awesome that people will ask for by name. If that takes a hyphen in the name – go for it.”
Pick A Domain Name That Can Grow
Mueller is right about picking a domain name that won’t lock your site into one topic. When a site grows in popularity the natural growth path is to expand the range of topics the site coves. But that’s hard to do when the domain is locked into one rigid keyword phrase. That’s one of the downsides of picking a “Best + keyword + reviews” domain, too. Those domains can’t grow bigger and look tacky, too.
That’s why I’ve always recommended brandable domains that are memorable and encourage trust in some way.
Read the post on Reddit:
Read Mueller’s response here.
Featured Image by Shutterstock/Benny Marty
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