2021 The year the four-day work week takes hold
One Kiwi business has applied it in the office and on building sites, another says it’s ‘the way the whole world will move’, with trades also in, writes Libby Wilson.
Dropping a day from the working week without losing pay isn’t just a dream for workers at some businesses. Four-day-week workers are using their bonus time for everything from landscaping their first home to getting out mountain biking.
And while the concept is trickier for the trades, at least one Waikato firm is compressing 40-or-so hours into four days as a stepping stone to the model used by short-week pioneer Perpetual Guardian.
The buzz around the four-day working week has grown steadily since Perpetual Guardian’s Andrew Barnes introduced it permanently in late 2018.
Employees work four days but are paid for five, and Barnes said at the time that productivity increased by 20 per cent during a trial.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has encouraged businesses to consider the idea post-Covid, and Unilever – which makes products ranging from icecream to deodorant – is trialling the idea with its 81 Kiwi employees.
In Waikato, the Kerrik Group recently switched to permanent fourday weeks after a trial across offices and building sites.
Advances in technology and programmes mean workers should be able to get through their workloads in four days, people and culture coordinator Brieana Coulter said.
The extra day gives employees time to drop children off at school or spend time with them. Coulter has been landscaping around her recently bought first home, and a colleague has got more mountain biking time. And volunteering could be on the cards.
Kerrik Group has 50 employees across architecture firm Evoke and building company RPS Homes, which share managers. Those on the building side have been the most hesitant about the four-day week, because of concerns about meeting deadlines.
‘‘But they proved they could on the trial,’’ Coulter said.
Tasks are mapped out carefully, but there is the occasional piece of work on a rest day because of uncontrollable delays such as bad weather or late deliveries. It has been an easier switch for office workers, Coulter said, though they have had to learn to interrupt each other less.
Clients and subcontractors have made the odd joke about not working as hard, but most are interested in the concept.
A four-day week gives workers a sense of trust and autonomy and creates a state of mind, the University of
Waikato’s Dr Maree Roche said.
‘‘We go to work more engaged and . . . more productive. It’s not just productive. When we’re in that state at work you’re more likely to go the extra mile,’’ said the co-director of the Waikato Management leadership unit.
What’s more, the recent experience of Covid and flexible working arrangements have given employers confidence that work gets done even when employees aren’t under their noses.
Roche, who has an organisational psychology background, expects more businesses to move to the four-day week.
‘‘It might be that the good employers who are offering this sort of work will be the employers of choice and preference, and they will be the ones that get the great staff,’’ she said.
However, a four-day week is just one tool in the kete of things organisations can offer, she said, along with options such as working from home a day a week.
Some companies have a different approach, with four 10-hour days.
Hamilton-based manufacturing firm Longveld is 18 months into this intermediate step, with the Perpetual Guardian model as its end goal.
‘‘I fully believe this is the way the whole world will move,’’ managing director Pam Roa said.
‘‘It’s part of the modernisation of workplaces, and we wanted to trial it under our own terms rather than get to a point where we’re the last ones to give it a go.’’
Tradespeople have often questioned how to apply the four-day week and Longveld is working on bumping up productivity to make it feasible, Roa said.
Longveld has 75 employees, 80 per cent of them on the tools.
Already, employees have used their free day for things like skiing or joint fishing excursions.
And if overtime is required, it is done on Friday, still leaving two free days and allowing parents to watch their children play sport.
People the model doesn’t suit have options such as four eight-hour days or, where possible, a day working from home.
But Leisure Line Caravans in northern Hamilton is reluctantly heading back to five days to meet an influx of orders.
Workers started doing four 10-hour days after the Covid lockdown, codirector Wayne Bates said.
He would have loved to have carried on, but by early December there were too many orders to make it possible.
Leisure Line has 32 employees who can build about eight caravans a month on four-day weeks.
While the shorter week was running, an open door policy and allowing employees to tweak their hours helped, Bates said.
There is no hard and fast research on what’s best for each situation, Waikato Chamber of Commerce chief executive Don Good said.
‘‘Talk to the leaders from different industries and you will find a keenness to look at the concept, but each business has to make their own decision.’’