Jobs: The benefits of a four-day workweek
The pandemic made “flexibility around work-life balance” crucial for companies trying to hold on to workers, said Irina Anghel and Arianne Cohen in Bloomberg. “Now some see the four-day workweek as a new weapon in the battle for talent.” The appeal of a shorter week got a boost last week with the release of a study involving 61 U.K. companies that tested a four-day week for six months last year. The businesses, including banks, fast-food restaurants, and marketing agencies, gave 2,900 participating workers an extra paid day off to see whether they could continue getting the same job done in fewer days. Most did. The businesses reported “revenue gains” and “drops in turnover,” while productivity held steady. Employees loved having extra time to spend with children and elderly parents, to exercise, and to attend to housework and their personal lives. Companies rated the overall experience an 8.3 out of 10. Fifty-six of the companies—92 percent—decided to continue trying the new schedule after the pilot ended. Eighteen made it permanent.
The four-day week could be an antidote for “the ‘Great Resignation’ phenomenon” that occurred during and after the pandemic, said Annabelle Timsit in The Washington Post. About 70 percent of employees who participated in the U.K. trial reported significantly reduced feelings of burnout. Many said they had lower levels of anxiety and fatigue, and their mental and physical health improved. The new schedule was so popular with workers that 15 percent said “no amount of money” could persuade them to return to a five-day-aweek schedule. “There’s nothing inevitable about working eight hours a day, five days a week (or more),” said Anna North in Vox. It only became “part of American labor law in the 1930s,” after decades of strikes by workers exhausted from 14-hour days. “Then as now, the country may be ripe for a change.”
Proposals to move to a four-day week date back to the 1950s, said Lora Kelley in The New York Times. But “the idea never took hold,” for various reasons— “including inertia.” Some economists argue it will fade this time, too. Stanford University economics professor Nick Bloom said offering full-time pay for four days of work is “a tough sell to managers and investors” because “most businesses are already trying hard to operate efficiently.” This study focused on a small number of firms that volunteered, so that might skew the results positively. Most of the participating businesses were small employers, said Vanessa Fuhrmans in The Wall Street Journal. Larger companies facing intense competition and stock pressures remain leery about cutting employee work hours. Their reluctance is one of many obstacles to “widespread adoption.”