A study of companies that adopted a four-day work week by Henley Business School found:
· 78% of staff were happier
· 70% were less stressed
· 62% took fewer sick days
When Microsoft Japan deployed a four-day work week in 2019, it saw a productivity boost of 40%. With so many pros for people and profit, the four-day work week is looking more likely than ever to become a common fixture. To ease your worries and prepare your business and employees for a smooth transition into the future of work, there are actions you can start to take now.
In this article, we’ll talk about how to get ready for this transition and embrace the four-day work week head-on. The four-day work week is a condensed work schedule based on the theory that fewer hours “on the clock” will lead to more productivity, lower running costs, and happier employees. It’s a business operations model that gained popularity following a four-year trial that tracked the reduced work week of 2,500 workers.
Businesses typically take two approaches to the four-day work week: having everyone take the same day off or a flexible approach where employees choose their own time off during the week.
The second option is only possible with a business culture that doesn’t keep employees stuck at their desk in synchronous meetings, which is a lot easier now that employees have tasted a virtual work environment because of the pandemic.
Importantly, the four-day work week does not entail cramming a normal 40-hour work week into four days, nor does it mean cutting wages to fit a reduced schedule. The four-day work week is a unique reduction of the common five-day work week without cutting pay or productivity while working fewer hours per week.
Iceland was ripe for the four-day work week experiment. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) placed Iceland as one of the countries providing the least number of hours per week for leisure and personal care.
According to the Icelandic study, researchers found that “worker wellbeing increased across a range of indicators, from perceived stress and burnout to health and work-life balance.”
Other world leaders are taking note. Talks are happening across the globe in Spain, the UK, New Zealand, and Japan. In California, Congressman Takano has proposed legislation in favor of the four-day work week.
Employees are pushing from their side, too. With over 30,000 signatures from around the world, 4 Day Week Global is campaigning to pilot more four-day programs supported by research from Harvard, Oxford, and Boston College.
During the pandemic, much of the working population faced entirely new challenges. With an always-on remote meeting schedule, compounded for many by a lack of childcare and homeschool obligations, much of the world’s workforce felt there was considerably less time for productivity during standard working hours (i.e. 9-5).
While this spontaneous experiment in remote work illuminated many issues (such as the need to be ‘always on’ that we referenced earlier), it also showed us just how much can be accomplished with a flexible work schedule.
“Normal life” is slowly resuming. The children are returning to school, and employers are grasping at a now-or-never chance to change up some of the dysfunctional working habits of before, like conducting too many meetings that ruin productivity and disrupt focused work.
The pre-pandemic results of four-day workweek trials combined with the learnings of the past year are catalyzing a new way of working. With a 32-hour workweek instead of a 40-hour workweek, we’ve seen people get their work done while traveling the world, giving back to their communities, and starting passion projects.
Besides the change in thinking and culture change to support a four-day workweek, it is important to ensure that your employees have the right tools to get their work done efficiently. The great thing about a 4-day workweek is that employees will need to focus on the important and have the information they need at their fingertips.
Intellective’s Employee Experience Pack is allowing employees to get all the information they need to do their jobs quickly and easily within a unified platform through the web or mobile apps. The Employee Experience Pack is able to pull in and access information from various systems to give the employees everything they need in one location. This means that your employees can avoid wasting time searching for information on spending hours on hold at the support desk.
