2 CT towns are testing a four-day workweek
Two Connecticut towns are trying out a four-day workweek for public employees, a schedule popular with workers around the nation and one of the keys to remaining competitive in a fierce hiring environment, local officials say.
Vernon moved most departments to a MondayThursday schedule without reducing total hours. Earlier this month, the town shifted public office hours to Monday through Wednesday from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and Thursdays, 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. Workers in the social service and police departments and other sections will continue working on Fridays.
In neighboring Ellington, the trial schedule for most departments starting Aug. 1 will be Mondays from 8 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. and Tuesday-Thursday, 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Officials in both towns said the new schedules align with public use of town services, which is lighter on Fridays.
But competition for an increasingly shallow pool of skilled workers is the main driver, Vernon Town Administrator Michael Purcaro said. Purcaro noted major shifts in the labor market after the coronavirus pandemic emerged in 2020, including people seeking a better work-life balance.
Town leaders in Connecticut have been poaching from each other, and one of the lures has been a flexible schedule, including the four-day workweek, Purcaro said.
“We have lost good candidates to other communities . ... We had to take action,” he said.
Other municipalities have had the four-day week for years, including Danbury, where city employee union members voted 56-32 in favor of the change in 2008. Savings on energy costs was among the main drivers, then-Mayor Mark Boughton said.
Not everyone was happy. A title researcher for a local law firm said at the time that Friday closings would be “a real problem for us,” especially as other municipalities in the area also were considering similar schedule changes.
But Purcaro said the change is necessary because Vernon is not only competing against towns of similar size for quality workers, but also with cities and the state government. Town officials are prepared to negotiate the schedule change with union leaders and the four-day workweek likely will become permanent, he said. The Ellington change will be effective for 90 days, and the first selectman then will evaluate whether it becomes permanent, according to a town notice.
Many workers like at least the idea of a four-day workweek.
A survey by Qualtrics, an experience management company that gauges people's interactions with organizations found that 92 percent of employees would support their employer launching a four-day workweek.
Still, the majority of respondents acknowledged trade-offs, including potentially having to work longer hours to make up missed work. Also, there was concern about the impact of reduced working hours on customer experience, with 55 percent of respondents saying a four-day workweek likely would frustrate customers.
When asked to choose between two options, 50 percent of employees said they'd prefer increased flexibility to work when they want, compared with 47 percent who said they would rather have a fourday workweek — supporting other Qualtrics research that showed employees prioritize flexibility and control, according to the company.
A Gallup poll from March 2020 found that of 10,364 full-time workers surveyed, only 5 percent said they worked four days a week, while 84 percent said five days and 11 percent responded six days.
Of those working six days, 38 percent reported feeling burned out “often” or “always.” Among the five-day workers, 26 percent reported feeling burned out often or always, compared with 23 percent of those with four-day workweeks, Gallup found. In addition, those working four-day weeks were found to have the highest rates of “thriving wellbeing” (63 percent), compared with those working five (57 percent) or six days (56 percent).
However, Gallup reported, the percentage of “actively disengaged” workers was highest for those with four- and six-day workweeks. Authors of an article about the poll results found that moving from working five days a week to four could increase an organization's percentage of actively disengaged employees.
“In other words, by working fewer days per week, employees who already feel disconnected from their employer, team or manager are more likely to drift even farther away — from tolerating their jobs to hating them,” they stated.