Work-life balance

Undeniably, remote work became very popular because of the pandemic. True enough, countries like the USA were encouraging employers to go for remote work. For one, as early as March, 2020, Twitter said, it would let its employees work from home permanently. Two days after, Facebook followed suit and announced that “half of its workforce would go virtual over the next decade.” The same is true with Shopify, Dropbox and Microsoft.

Indeed, the pandemic gave companies and workers time to ponder and weigh several options out of their business and work situations, respectively. To some extent, it has even led to the Great Resignation as workers reconsidered their employment not only because of wage or benefit issues but also for the “pursuit of happiness.”

However, a number of executives in the USA urged their employees to go back to their offices as the pandemic subsided. Among others, Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan, declared himself a “remote-work skeptic; Mark Zuckerberg stressed that engineers get more done in the office; and Google’s Chief People Officer told their employees that office attendance would factor into performance reviews.”

This call, however, was not, probably, as loud and convincing for employees to heed. This is so, as the Survey of Business Uncertainty that was jointly ran by The Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank, the University of Chicago, and Stanford revealed a different result. Such survey covered “senior executives at roughly 500 U.S. businesses across industries and regions each month.” The most recent of which was conducted in July 2023. In such survey, they (workers across generations) were asked, “Looking forward to five years from now, what share of your firm’s full-time employees do you expect to be in each category (fully in person, hybrid, fully remote) in 2028?”

The survey revealed the following: a. fully in person, on site-in 202870.26% (2023-75.27%), b. hybrid – in 2028-16.3% (2023-14.1%) and c. fully virtual/remote – in 202811.2% (2023-10.2%). Obviously, therefore, working fully in person will further decrease in the next five years while both hybrid and fully virtual/remote will rise. Hybrid though is the most preferred. Simply put, when they talk about their “pursuit of happiness”, what they really meant is “work-life” balance. And hybrid, they say, is the most appropriate.

While, generally, the labor force (across generations) pushes for “worklife” balance via a hybrid of in person and remote, the younger generation’s preference is quite different as revealed in a Bankrate survey (Bankrate, LLC is a consumer financial services company based in New York City) released in October, 2023. In such survey, as “workers reconsider their work-life balance post-pandemic, 92% of young people say that they would make sacrifices in exchange for a four-day workweek.” According to Sarah Foster, a Bankrate analyst, “Younger generations have obviously lived through major economic events like the coronavirus pandemic, which blurred the lines between where you work, how you work, how much time you spend doing it.”

Notably, “while the five-day schedule remains the standard in the U.S., 22% of U.S. workers anticipate that four-day workweeks will be the norm in their industry within the next five years.” Ms. Foster added that “If a company wants to bring younger workers back (into office), maybe this is the perk they should look into.”

Remarkably, the same survey revealed that “older generations also showed a strong interest in the fourday workweek with over 86% of Gen X and baby boomer workers saying that they’d be willing to give something up in exchange for a shorter week.” What separates them (older workers) though from the Gen Z and millennial workers is that 61% say they would work longer hours to attain a four-day workweek. This simply means, a compressed workweek.

If we should embrace this scheme, there shall be a lot of hurdles to overcome. For one, this means working beyond eight (8) hours without the corresponding overtime pay. There is also a twelve-hour a day workday limitation to look into. Moreover, if a company is currently operating on a three-shift schedule, will this mean that it shall be reduced to just two shifts a day? So, scheduling should also be a challenge.

While we agree that work-life balance is mutually beneficial, we must recognize that there shall also be legislative challenges that our lawmakers must address to. First and foremost, the country’s labor laws must be amended to allow a 4-day workweek.

More importantly, given that productivity is still a big concern in the country, the government must make sure that no one (whether employer or employees) abuses the new work structure, if considered.