Learning Lessons From the 4-day Work Week
New evidence is emerging regarding the benefits of downtime.
In August, employees at Microsoft Japan moved to a trial four-day work week. Microsoft saw a 40% increase in production, with huge savings, including a 23% decrease in electricity use and a 58 per cent decrease in office printing costs.
This isn’t the first time such an experiment has taken place, with similar results.
In 2018, Perpetual Guardian, a New Zealand finance company, tested the model and found a 20% increase in productivity and a 27% decrease in workplace stress.
So, what’s happening here?
At least in part, these small breaks are allowing for a mental sigh, a quick reset from hyper-concentration and fatigue. This is a huge boon to creatives, which should include all management. This mental sigh, or micro-break, is the “aha” experience, where epiphanies occur. This is abundantly clear in the experience of Google and its “20 per cent” time. In 2004, Google asked its employees to abandon their regular duties for one-fifth of the time. It was instead to be used to dream up things for the benefit of the company. This down time was home to game-changing innovations including Gmail,
Google News and Adsense.
Making these breaks available does a lot for a workforce.
Ask Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce (a $135 billion company) which now has “mindfulness zones” on half the floors of its San Francisco tower. These big companies are making huge steps in this area. But that doesn’t preclude medium or even small businesses to make moves in these directions too.
As Google execs point out, it’s the “idea” of a flexible workplace that counts. And that can start simply by encouraging staff to take a walk away from their desks at lunch. That reset will pay dividends for both the employee and the company.