Most companies that took part in a four-day working week pilot project in Britain said they saw no loss in productivity during the experiment and, in some cases, even saw a significant improvement. according to a survey of participants released last week.
Posted at 12:00 p.m.
Halfway through the six-month trial, in which employees at 73 companies were getting one paid day off a week, 35 of 41 companies that responded to a survey said it was “likely” or ” extremely likely” that they will continue the four-day workweek beyond the end of the project in late November. All but two of the companies said that productivity either stayed the same or improved. Remarkably, six companies said productivity had improved significantly.
The idea of a four-day work week has been around for decades. In 1956, US Vice President Richard Nixon said he foresees it in the “not too distant future”, although it has not materialized on a large scale. But the changes that have come with the coronavirus pandemic, to remote working and hybrid working, have brought issues related to other aspects of work back to the fore. Are we working five days a week just because we’ve done it that way for over a century, or is it really the best way?
“If you look at the impact of the pandemic in the workplace, we were often too focused on the workplace,” said Joe O’Connor, CEO of 4 Day Week Global, a nonprofit group that leads the study with a think tank and researchers from the University of Cambridge, Boston College and the University of Oxford.
Remote work and hybrid work can bring many benefits, but they don’t address burnout and overwork.
Joe O’Connor
Some business leaders participating in the trial said the four-day week gave employees more time to exercise, cook, spend time with family and pursue hobbies, which boosted their well-being and made them more energetic and productive when they were at work. Critics, however, worry about added costs and reduced competitiveness, especially when many European companies are already lagging behind rivals in other regions.
More than 3,300 workers in banking, marketing, healthcare, financial services, retail, hospitality and other sectors in Britain are taking part in the pilot, which is one of the biggest studies to date, according to Jack Kellam, a researcher for Autonomy, a think tank that is one of the trial’s organizers.
No difference
At Allcap, one of the companies participating in the pilot project, it was too early to tell how the shorter work week affected productivity or business results, said Mark Roderick, CEO and co-owner of the company. of engineering and industrial supplies of 40 people. Overall, however, employees were happy to have an extra day off, and the company plans to maintain it.
“Customers haven’t really noticed a difference,” said Roderick, whose company is headquartered in Gloucester, England.
The new schedule notably gave him more time to train for a recent Ironman triathlon in Wales. Still, some days are more stressful than before, as summer holidays and a reduced work week have put a strain on staff. “We’ve all been a bit under pressure,” he said, using a British expression for “in a difficult situation.”
Experiments similar to the one carried out in Great Britain are also carried out in other countries, mainly in the private sector, notably in the United States, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand and Australia. In a trial in Gothenburg, Sweden, managers found that employees completed the same amount of work, or even more.
Permanently
Jo Burns-Russell, managing director of Amplitude Media, a marketing agency in Northampton, England, said the four-day week had been so successful that the 12-person company hoped to make it permanent. Employees have found ways to work more efficiently, she says. The result is that the company delivers the same volume of work and continues to grow, even though half of the employees are off on Wednesdays and the other half on Fridays.
“It did me good, because I don’t spend my time going from one thing to another,” said M.me Burns-Russell. She took up painting as a hobby and feels calmer overall. August is usually a quieter month for the business, she says, so the real test will be to see how the experience plays out over the next few months as the business grows. , she says.
Gary Conroy, founder and CEO of 5 Squirrels, a Brighton, England-based skincare maker that is participating in the trial, said employees became more productive, while making fewer mistakes, and that they collaborate better.
“We kind of got away from the idea of ’it’s your job, not mine,’ he said, because we all try to get out before 5 p.m. on Thursdays.”
This article was originally published in The New York Times.