The team is deciding how to run a 4-day work week pilot — specifically, whether everyone takes Friday off (better for morale, but costs more and risks customer service) or whether teams rotate days off (keeps coverage strong but the benefit feels less equal). They also need to clear an open legal question about non-exempt staff before any schedule gets locked.
The situation: After 18% voluntary attrition last year with burnout cited as the top reason people leave, the 4-day week has become the single most-requested benefit. The team has already converged on a workable structure: a headcount-neutral pilot, staggered schedules with Friday fully covered, and an automatic fallback if service levels slip. What they have NOT settled is whether to invest the extra 15% headcount to make Friday a universal day off, and how to handle a still-unresolved legal question about non-exempt staff overtime. The meeting must land both calls so the pilot can launch.
Finance's FP&A lead confirmed no budget exists for the headcount bump in the current cycle.
Operations' records show Friday is the highest-volume day with p90 already at 6.2 hours; People conceded the coverage point in negotiation.
Fallback fires on (a) rolling 7-day p90 >4h or (b) p90 >4h on two consecutive Fridays, triggering either a 15% headcount add or a contractor surge capped at the annualized cost of that headcount add.
Operations needs a staggered schedule to protect the 4-hour customer SLA on the company's highest-volume day (Friday p90 currently 6.2h). People accepts staggered only if uniform Friday does not pay for itself inside 6 months via attrition savings, and only if days off rotate so no team is permanently stuck with a Wednesday off. Operations has not yet produced the 15% headcount cost model, and People cannot model attrition savings without the per-headcount cost figure. The team needs to decide whether the pilot design waits for that model or moves forward on the staggered-rotating default while the model runs in parallel.
What we need to decide together: Lock the pilot on staggered rotating off-days now and let the cost model run in parallel, OR commit to a specific deadline for the model before any schedule is finalized.
Both Finance and People have flagged that how a 32-hour week interacts with non-exempt overtime rules is unknown, and neither will sign off on a schedule that hasn't been legally reviewed. Without counsel's answer, the team cannot confirm whether staggered shifts trigger overtime, whether week-1 absorption is defensible, or whether the headcount-neutral cost thesis still holds. The legal review must clear before any pilot structure is final.
What we need to decide together: Who owns the legal review with counsel, and by what date must it clear so the pilot structure can lock.
People can model replacement cost and time-to-fill but cannot produce the attrition-savings model without the per-headcount cost — this blocks the uniform-Friday cost comparison.
Finance and People both flagged this depends on the wage-and-hour answer; until counsel reviews, no one can confirm whether the headcount-neutral path actually stays cost-neutral under staggered shifts.
Finance committed in negotiation to size the cap within 48 hours (annualized cost of the 15% headcount add), but the figure is not yet in any record shared with the team.
Captured in the converged staggered structure — surfaced independently by Operations to ensure the team didn't default to the most headline-friendly option and break the SLA on Friday.
People flagged this as a self-fulfilling prophecy — if support and ops can't take Fridays but everyone else can, resentment may be worse than no pilot. This is the reason People insists on rotating off-days rather than permanent team assignments, and is the human-side constraint on any staggered design.
↳ added to the decisions as D5
Start with D1 and D3 — both are time-sensitive and block every other decision. D1 sets the pilot's structural path, and D3 is the legal gate that nothing else can finalize until it clears. If those two land in the first half of the meeting, the rest (budget authority, trigger micro-loop, rotation design) follows cleanly.