by Team@Lotus
The four-day week has lately been talked about a lot, more so after Covid interjected work-from-home into the conversation. Now one of the largest four-day week trials has revealed that it is good for employees and employers both.
The companies in the study reported increased revenue, with fewer employees taking time off or resigning. While the effect of a shorter week on worker well-being is expected, the positive effects on company earnings and productivity may be more of a surprise.
The trial organized by non-profit 4 Day Week Global involved 33 companies and nearly 1,000 employees over a period of six months in countries including the US, Ireland and Australia. It saw no loss of pay for employees – firms paid 100 per cent of their salaries for 80 per cent of their time. But employees also pledged to put in 100 per cent of their usual effort over the shorter working week. Workers said they felt less stressed and burnout and reported higher rates of life satisfaction. No firms said they would go back to the five-day week.
Kickstarter, a crowdfunding site, is taking part in the study and Jon Leland, chief strategy officer, said in a statement that “the four-day week has been transformative for our business and our people. Staff are more focused, more engaged and more dedicated, helping us hit our goals better than before.”
Writing about the study for ‘The Conversation’ website, Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, director of the University of Oxford’s Wellbeing Research Centre, said “It’s time more companies made the switch.”
Reducing the number of work week hours was tried differently by Iceland between 2015 and 2019. The scheme that included hospitals, schools and social service workers was considered an “overwhelming success” and reduced hours – without a reduction in pay – has since been implemented for 86 percent of Iceland’s workforce.
In 1926, Henry Ford changed the six-days-a-week operation in his automobile factories down to five days per week, with no change in employee compensation. The 5-day week has since become de rigueur. A century later, many nations are still stuck with a 40-hour week, regardless of the industry. Now it is increasingly at odds with our 21st-century lifestyles and desktop work for many. In India, 6-day-week remains the norm!
Americans are toiling more!
Despite rising economic growth starting with the 1970s, scant progress has been made on giving more free time to workers. Unfortunately, in some cases, the trend is going south. Americans now work more hours than they did in 2000, for example. Technology has made us many times more productive over the past century, which means our brains have to process a lot more during a five-day work week than before. This has inevitably led to spikes in stress, anxiety and even burnout.
This is not only hitting families hard, but employers and national health services are also paying the price. accountancy firm Deloitte estimated the annual cost to employers of mental health issues is £45bn in the UK alone. This is ascribed mainly to absenteeism, or ‘presenteeism’ – where a person is physically present but not engaged in work because he or she feels ill. UK statistics show that there were 17 million worker days lost to stress, depression or anxiety in the UK in 2021-22. And the same trends show up for most other developed countries.
Now, employers may assume that if my people are working 20 percent less time, their output will drop, too. But several studies have shown that to be a false assumption. On the contrary, countries doing the least hours of work are often the most productive on an hourly basis. Some of these countries, such as Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands, are also considered the happiest. They all work less than 1400 hours a year on average, compared with the US and UK average of 1,800 hours.
The benefits of a shorter work week even extend to reducing emissions by cutting commutes, and providing the basis for evaluating our lives in more than just monetary terms.
