Today's Article

Clare Duffy, CNN Business Writer: 2Preventing employee 3burnout has become such an important 4priority that nearly one third of large U.S. companies are5 exploring shorter work weeks. One of them is Exos, a performance 6wellness company. CEO, Sarah Robbo O’Hagan saw the burnout and wanted to fix it. 

Sarah Robbo O’Hagan: It was a huge issue going on across all of our clients. And so we were like, well, hey, we could be a company that can help to 7figure out how to solve this. 

Clare Duffy: Her answer was something she calls ‘You Do You Fridays’. 

So tell us about ‘You Do You Fridays’. What does that mean? 

Sarah Robbo O’Hagan: So it means ‘You do you’. So you may choose to say this Friday I'm 8exhausted. I need to go spend time out hiking. Other people may say Friday's my day to just do quiet work and not be 9disturbed. But what we 10put in place was you cannot email, text, write to any of your 11colleagues. You can't set meetings. It is ‘You Do You Friday’. 

And what 12goes hand in hand with ‘You Do You Friday’ is how we 13constructed the other days of the week. We structured this because we know actually from training high performance athletes that you put a lot of load on them and then you follow it with really 14intentional 15recovery to get more out of how the athlete's performing. So think about us in the 16workplace, like if we're working 80-hour weeks, 70-hour weeks, which is some people are. It's like how 17on earth is your body ever recovering? Of course you're going to get burned out. 

So the more we can help to introduce this concept that recovery isn't weak, it's actually part of preparing you for higher performance, I think the better for all of us.