Your Guide To The Four-Day Working Week
Your Guide To The Four-Day Working Week
Several companies trialling a four-day working week have reported, improved revenue and a few employees taking off time from illness. The trial involves 33 companies are nearly 1000 employees from companies, including Australia, the US and Ireland, so no loss of pay for employees – companies paid 100% of their salaries for 80% of their time. As a result, employees reported feeling less stressed and reduced burnout. Of those companies surveyed few said they would return to a five-day working week.
Increase Well-being & Productivity
The four-day working week isn’t just for office jobs either. Iceland famous for its frozen food trialled the same practice of reduced working hours between 2015 and 2019. The company said it was an overwhelming success and reduced hours without pay. This has since been rolled out to 86% of Iceland’s workforce. Continued research into shifting working patterns shows that reduced hours boost employees, mental health and well-being along with their productivity. It also brings other benefits including reduced carbon emissions by cutting journeys to the workplace.
Improved Mental Health
Since the dawn of the 1980s, when computers became commonplace, in many offices little has been done to free up time for employees. Worse, there has been a notable trend going in reverse; Americans now work more hours than I did in 2000. This is starting to take a toll on employee well-being and their mental health. It doesn’t take an expert to realise (mainly due to the increase in technology) that the human brain is being asked to process a lot more information during the working week than it ever has in the past. This has led to huge increases in stress, anxiety and burnout.
National health services and families are particularly impacted but employers are also bearing the cost. Deloitte’s estimate of the annual cost to employers of mental health issues is in the region of 45 billion in the UK alone. This is mostly due to absenteeism or worse presentism where a person is physically present at work but not engaged because I feel unwell.
UK Office for National Statistics estimates that there were 17 million working days lost due to stress, anxiety or depression in the UK between 2001–22. This is a continuing and worrying trend worldwide in other established countries before the increased trend towards hybrid working.
Four-Day Working Week Summary
The pandemic has forced many of us to reassess our relationship with work, a growing number of companies entertaining a four-day week. Although some remain sceptical, there are some clear signs. This trend is here to stay. Can you take away points, include a smaller carbon footprint per employee, less stressed, employees, reduced employment, churn more equality between men and women and for those, particularly with young families greater flexibility to access affordable childcare.
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