Andrew Barnes Keynote Speaker

Andrew Barnes is an innovator, entrepreneur, and philanthropist.

Andrew revolutionised the fiduciary and legal industries in New Zealand when he spearheaded the world’s first, 4-day work week at his company, Perpetual Guardian, in 2018.

Barnes believes a 4-day work week would raise productivity in the workplace, while also contributing to the personal wellbeing of staff and positively impacting our climate. The success of his initiative, saw the topic of a 4-day week at the forefront of global conversation about the future of work and Andrew featured across world headlines by mid-2019.

Perpetual Guardian, New Zealand’s largest corporate trustee company, was founded in 2014 by Andrew Barnes – who had since made a successful career of market-changing innovation and industry digitisation.

Early in his career, Andrew identified an opportunity for the evolution of real estate in Australia and became the chairman of realestate.com.au at the time of its IPO on the ASX. Later, Barnes took on the role of CEO at Bestinvest, a UK-based investment management and advisory company, leading its sale to private capital in 2007.

Andrew Barnes was also formerly managing director of Australian Wealth Management Limited, director of Coulthard Barnes, and former chair of both the Regional Facilities Auckland board and New Zealand’s leading payroll provider, PaySauce.

Andrew is presently, the architect of the global 4 Day Week movement. A community born out of the waves of attention the movement received around the world, in reaction to its successful programme launch at Perpetual Garden. Together with his partner and co-founder, Charlotte Lockhart, they conduct the largest ever 4-day work week trials across the UK, US, Canada, South Africa, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, with more than 250 companies and over 100,000 staff taking part.

As a pioneer in this movement, Barnes advises large corporations and close to a dozen country and regional governments, in countries like the US and Ireland, on effecting change in the way their populations will work now and in the future.

4 Day Week Global also spearheads a global research programme involving academics from leading universities including Boston College, Cambridge, and Andrew sits on the board of the newly created Wellbeing Research Centre at Oxford University.

Barnes penned The 4 Day Week book in 2020 as a guide for companies trying to reduce work hours and increase productivity. Passionate about philanthropy, he also established the Perpetual Guardian Foundation, which provides funding and scholarships to a collective of communities through the support of donors anywhere in New Zealand.

Andrew Barnes was recently recognised as a leader in workplace innovation by Forbes’ ‘Introducing The Forbes Future of Work 50‘. He holds an MA from Selwyn College, Cambridge and an ACIB (UK), and has attended the Program for Management Development at Harvard Business School.