Fourday week works on better productivity
AUCKLAND: The success of Perpetual Guardian’s trial of a fourday working week poses the question of whether this has the potential for broader application across the Kiwi workforce.
Andrew Barnes, the chief executive at the Auckland firm, says he has already received queries from numerous companies, local and overseas, on what steps to take to roll out similar initiatives within their businesses.
While Mr Barnes believes in the potential for the working model to be applied more broadly, he warned there would be a few roadblocks on the way.
The first and most pressing issue facing Mr Barnes is that employment law makes it difficult to put the initiative into practice.
‘‘Everything we’ve done in employment law is all about hours worked,’’ he said.
‘‘It started with the 12hour day, then 10hour day and now the eighthour day. We are conditioned to think in terms of time being the key issue as opposed to productivity.’’
Mr Barnes said this made sense historically, when most workers were on a production line or the mines, but it’s no longer fit for purpose in the modern age.
He pointed to the example of the accumulation of annual leave, saying that this is based on the number of days spent in the office, which in turn makes his attempt to offer the fourday week problematic in a legal sense.
There’s the logistical issue of when staff might choose to take their day off work. It goes without saying that most staff would prefer to take off either a Monday or a Friday to get a long weekend, but an empty building wouldn’t exactly be ideal in the services or manufacturing industries which are often required to deliver on a daily basis.
Mr Barnes said it was important not to take the Perpetual Guardian trial as a blueprint for the application of a fourday week across every business, pointing out that this exact approach won’t work across every business type and that managers should find an appropriate balance.
One of the earliest studies of the relationship between working hours and productivity involved a British munitions factory during World War 1 which required staff to work seven days a week.
‘‘When they reduced it to six days, productivity went up,’’ Mr Barnes noted.
Mr Barnes said staff should negotiate their terms of employment on the basis of what they produced rather than how many hours they worked.
If someone believed that they could complete the same amount of work in fewer days, then they should be remunerated according to the work done.
However, this shift also came with some risks in terms of how work was viewed in the modern context. Challenging many of the rules and norms that had been established and fought for by the unions risked unravelling the protections that had ensured businesses didn’t take advantage of their staff.
Mr Barnes was conscious of the concerns a focus on productivity might lead to potential job cuts as companies attempted to strip down to their most efficient work force.
There might be value in hanging on to the fiveday week till the law catches up. — NZME