A brave idea but let’s not blindly pursue dream of a four-day week
WE keep hearing about a ‘new normal’ supposedly dawning in the wake of coronavirus. Exactly what it will look like is not yet clear but there are some clues about the direction of travel.
Nicola Sturgeon gave a hint at Holyrood last Thursday during questions about the new phase in her Covid-19 strategy.
Outlining the kind of flexible arrangements employers would have to accept, she said: ‘We should no longer only be talking about things such as a four-day week; we should be encouraging employers to look at embracing them.’
A four-day week has been something of a holy grail in workplace management. Employees are typically enthusiastic for longer weekends, while employers are sold an opportunity to increase productivity while lowering overheads. There have been experiments here and there but the four-day week has failed to take off the way other innovations such as flexitime and remote working did.
This is odd, since there is some evidence of big benefits to the policy. A study by Reading University finance lecturer Miriam Marra found that businesses which had moved to a four-day week were reporting a collective saving of £92billion. Sixty-two per cent said employees took less sick time, 64 per cent said it made them more productive and 78 per cent said staff were happier.
Upheaval
Why aren’t firms running into the arms of the four-day week? After all, we will have to adjust our working lives anyway, now that we face a future of routine social distancing and intermittent lockdowns.
The problem is that many of the companies who have gone four-day are ‘progressive’ employers, niche outfits or tech giants such as Microsoft Japan. Not all businesses share their philosophy and many will be sceptical of the upheaval the change would cause.
More to the point, a software designer can more readily overhaul its working hours than a retail outlet.
Some proponents of a four-day week tout the economic benefits of workers having another day to shop or visit a restaurant or meet friends in the pub, which rather suggests these ‘progressive’ working hours wouldn’t apply to the lowestpaid, longest-working segments of the labour market.
Before ministers go any further, there will have to be pilot schemes across different workplaces (public and private sector, professional and service) to let us see how four-day weeks work in practice. We would learn if it eases the strain of finding childcare or finding a job.
We could test anecdotal evidence of productivity spikes and lower-stress workplaces. We could study the financial impact and the difficulties encountered by different sectors.
Pilot schemes and evidence-gathering aren’t terribly exciting and don’t provide immediate solutions at a time when speed is of the essence. But it would be a mistake to adopt a four-day week across vast swathes of the economy without fully understanding how it works in practice and what drawbacks it might bring.
Take the practicalities. Full-time employees in the UK work an average of 37 hours a week. Would shifting to four days mean cramming the same hours into a shorter working week or reducing hours overall and cutting salaries?
What about the knock-on effects on businesses and services that rely on the current working arrangements? A marked reduction in commuter footfall might lead rail companies to downsize their workforce, while city centre cafes and restaurants that rely on lunchtime custom from offices would see takings hit.
Workplace cleaners and catering staff might find their hours cut, while couriers could struggle to replace lost business. Some of these matters would correct themselves but we shouldn’t pretend there aren’t losers as well as winners.
One of the supposed winners would be parents, who would be able to spend more time with their children and not have to worry so much about (or pay so much for) good childcare. There are some indications from companies that have trialled a four-day week that reducing childcare-related stress contributes to a happier, more productive workforce.
Moreover, as Scottish recruitment agency Change has pointed out, 89 per cent of the two million Britons not in work because of childcare duties are women. Change argues: ‘A four-day work week would promote an equal workplace as employees would be able to spend more time with their families and better juggle care and work commitments.’
This sounds sensible enough in theory but what about practice? Imagine a divorced couple who share custody of their two children and work shift patterns routinely subject to change.
They need maximum flexibility in childcare but now Child A’s nursery has gone Monday to Thursday while Child B’s has stayed the same. What happens if both parents have to start working Fridays? A policy intended to relieve some of their childcare issues has just added to them.
The Scottish Government could mandate that public sector organisations make the change but many private sector firms may be sceptical and decline to follow suit. A working week in which state employees clock in four days while the taxpayers who fund their salaries clock in five risks stirring up resentment. That resentment is not about jealousy or miserliness. Taxpayers would have to foot the bill and so they will need to be convinced that is it good value.
When Labour proposed a four-day week last year, Jethro Elsden, from the Rightleaning Centre for Policy Studies, estimated that doing so in the public sector alone would cost between £17billion (if the most enthusiastic productivity predictions proved correct) and £45billion.
Elsden concluded ‘this approach would mean delivering either cuts to wider government or a huge increase in taxes – or accepting a lower standard of public services as a quid pro quo for lowering the hours of public sector workers’.
As well as practical considerations, there is the philosophical question: what value do we place on work? Work used to be thought of as a source of dignity and self-worth. Toil was as good for the soul as it was for the wallet.
Sacrifices
It shaped a person’s character and defined their standing in the community. To be a grafter, especially in a physically intensive job, was a source of pride and a hallmark of respectability. There was virtue in sweat.
Today we are more concerned with ‘work-life balance’. We look back at prior generations and instead of callus-handed breadwinners see absent fathers and early heart attacks. We view work as an economic necessity rather than a moral marker and admire those who make sacrifices in salary and promotion to spend more time with their children.
The progress made in workers’ rights and workplace safety were hard won and should be cherished. But there is a chance that, in moving to a four-day week, we move away from a balance between work and life and towards a social model in which work is seen as an outdated and harmful concept.
Certainly, there are utopian visions of the future in which automation replaces much of the need for human toil and a universal basic income frees us up to pursue creative dreams, leisure and passion projects.
It may sound tempting to some but to me it sounds sinister. Work is more than paid drudgery; it is an expression and guarantee of personal autonomy.
Exchanging your labour for payment is an exercise in self-reliance that frees you from dependence on the beneficence of charity and the designs of the state.
The case for a four-day week should be heard on its merits and the policy seriously considered if the benefits for workers and employers outweigh the drawbacks. But it should be about making it easier to work, not treating work like a social problem that will eventually have to be done away with. If the ‘new normal’ means less work, then it also means less control over our own lives.