Four -day working week – increase in productivity or unrealistic promise?

Although the four -day week is becoming increasingly popular in Europe and Japan, it has not yet decreased to a considerable extent in the United States.

This despite the obvious success of an examination of the Advocacy Organization 4 -day week globally among 35 companies across North America in 2022. With almost 2,000 employees, the pilot lasted six months and generated various services for employees and business services.

For example, the employees experienced improved well -being, with also a lower level of stress and burnout as well as improvements in physical health. The employers recorded a slight decline in absenteeism and the average number of resignation. Interestingly, the combined income also rose by 8%during the experiment.

Pilot projects have shown similar advantages elsewhere. Dr. Rita Fontinha is an Associate Professor of Strategic Personnel Management in the international business and strategy department of Henley Business School. Based on their experience with a four -day week in Portugal and studying the world's biggest attempt in Great Britain:

For employees, we know that due to a better balance of work-life, improved sleep, more physical exercise, etc. there is significant positive effects on mental health. It's a big price, so it's very relevant. The four -day week increases retention, reduces the absenteeism a lot and makes it easier to attract new employees, which is also important.

But there is also an impact on productivity, as Fontinha emphasizes:

In some functions, people achieve better than others. In more technical roles you see no great benefit in relation to the increased productivity per hour. The connection between time and output is more direct and therefore does not change very much. The advantages here are more associated with less sales and reduced absenteeism. In jobs that are more associated with creativity and care, the resting element plays a stronger role in the performance of people and the reported productivity increase.

Productivity as an important measure of success

Andrew allum, a senior partner at LEK Consulting, is not convinced. Like Fontinha, he does not consider compressed hours (five days in four days) to be a real four -day week. He also does not consider it credible to reduce hours by 20%, to pay the same at the same time and to increase productivity at the same time:

In order to achieve the promise of a four -day week, improvement in productivity would require 25%, ie in the production per hour. If you speak over 80% of the hours, as was the case with the British attempt, this is almost impossible in my opinion.

I don't think organizations have activated the secret of increasing productivity by 25%. It is very difficult to do and I don't think it can be shown in many sectors or situations on a scale. If people want to work less, they just have to earn less.

Instead, it is all of the opinion that the organizations that promote this approach use “special cases or hand grinders” if they make the productivity gains in the event. He quotes a metal work business that “canceled Friday”, but it shouldn't experience a loss against business.

But his programs went out on a Friday overnight and there were no customers who had received on a Saturday, so it made no difference in the productivity conditions. In another case, a restaurant decided to open only four days a week, so it wasn't really about productivity.

Interestingly, not everyone focuses on productivity as an important problem here. For example, more than a dozen British members of the parliament (MPs) call for the government to start a working period. The task would be to give recommendations on how the country could change from a five -day standard week.

The Labor MP Peter Dowd has submitted a change in the law on employment rights for this purpose. He explained his motivation for the Mirror newspaper:

The advantages of greater productivity in the economy due to new technologies such as artificial intelligence must be passed on to the workers in more free free time. A four-day, 32-hour working week is the future of work and I ask my party to support this change so that we can start a much larger transition.

Who benefits the most?

However, some sectors and roles would probably find the transition harder than others if the situation is over, Fontinha believes:

For example, companies with many front workers would have to make a much higher initial investment in implementation than people with many distant workers because they need the physical presence of their employees.

The work of the concept may have to introduce the work or postponement of the work to ensure that sales levels and customer service standards are confirmed. But as Brian Elliott, managing director of the advisory company Work Forward, emphasizes:

It is possible, but it quickly becomes complex.

However, Fontinha says that it can be worthwhile for the terms of staff and storage. This is not least due to the fact that the people who appreciate the four-day week are usually more flexible without access to other forms, including front line employees. The same applies to women who tend to assume a large element of domestic and caring responsibility than their male colleagues.

As soon as employers have piloted a four -day week, the vast majority stay with it. Fontinha's studies show that only 10% dropped the idea, although in the Portuguese study one from five to nine days changed four days. She explains:

For those who did not continue, it was generally because they only reduced the hours without changing one of their processes by changing them by tightening or automating and reducing the meeting times. But 20% drew fourteen days for nine days. There is a large lesson when you start slowly. Radical movements can be dangerous, so it is often better to introduce changes progressive, and this includes the process change. So do things step by step and follow a gradual approach.

How to fall time

On the other hand, Elliott believes that the most valuable thing that organizations can do here is to rethink their approach to meetings that are often important time weeks. He indicates his former employer Slack, who introduced “Focus Fridays” and “Maker Weeks” as a possible example of how it works.

No internal meetings were allowed on Fridays on Fridays, although customer meetings could still take place. The goal here was to free the time for “deep work”. Elliott explains:

If someone did everything in a few hours and took the rest of the day off, it was “good for you”. As long as they did the work and delivered the results, it was fine.

The maker weeks occurred once in the district and included the cancellation of all recurring meetings. As Elliott says:

Nobody pays enough attention to the quality of your calendar or what likes it. With this practice, however, we asked the leaders to look at their meetings and find out whether they still had to happen. It was the training if they had outgrown their usefulness, they could take place every two week, so many people had to be involved, etc.

It was developed to restrict the number of meetings that people had so that they could do deep work and enable more schedule flexibility.

However, there are other operational challenges to take into account. As Fontinha emphasizes:

What do you do about holidays and would it be a four -day or three -day week in this case? This type of problem means that it is important to consult employees at all levels of the organization instead of pursuing a top-down approach.

Also remember that important blockers are often line managers. So you have to involve them from the start of discussions and ask them how to implement it. Everything takes time and effort and there is a lot of work in relation to the organization of teams, the elaboration of strata and ensure that everyone has the perception of fairness. It is really about managing the process because it takes time to change the work of people, but it is generally worth it.

My attitude

A widespread postponement of a four-day week is unlikely that it will take place shortly again and again-the move from six to a five-day week took decades and the former still exist in some countries. Before the curve, Great Britain and Europe are based on concerns regarding the employee balance and the burnout level as well as in South Korea and Japan due to the desire to increase the birth rates. US employers are apparently much less enthusiastic.

The second article in this two-part series in the four-day week will look at two case studies: a company that has accepted a four-day week and one that has not done it-or not fully (this will be published tomorrow).