You can’t take it anymore. It’s one day too many. You have your children to take to the doctor. Or your washing machine to fix. Urgent errands to do. But you are stuck behind your desk, glued to your seat, your head elsewhere but your body at work, productivity at zero despite a present certified by bloodless colleagues like you.
In short: you dream of a four-day week. Good, because we have the study to show your boss to convince him that such a revolution is not only painless for his company, but that it can actually be beneficial for him, even on a purely financial level, as well as for the company as a whole.
As Bloomberg explainsthe New Zealand organization The 4-day global week published the first results of a pilot study thus described at the end of November. “The pilot is a six-month, four-day-a-week coordinated test, with no employee pay cuts. The program is coordinated by 4 Day Week Global, in collaboration with researchers from the University of Cambridge and Boston College, supported by researchers from each region.”
“It matters because the two-day weekend doesn’t work for people”says principal investigator Juliet Schor, Boston College, of this proposed four-day revolution week.
“In many countries we have a working week that was set in stone in 1938 and is no longer compatible with contemporary lifestyles”adds. “It is vital for the well-being of employed people that we take an interest in the structure of a working week.”
The first results seem to prove him right, and not a little. While a second phase of the study is underway in the United States and Canada and a third wave will focus on South African and European facilities, each new step allows the data obtained to be adjusted, the first results pertaining to American, Irish and Australian companies.
A total of 969 employees were followed over a ten-month period as they reduced their workweek by an average of six hours, with no reduction in pay. As Bloomberg points out, the companies studied ranged from a Dublin NGO to a southern US restaurant chain to an RV builder in Ohio.
All pink, all green
And everywhere, the same joy and efficiency: a dozen indicators, from productivity to employee fatigue, were all positive at the end of the trial period. Even better, if data can be difficult to manipulate in the post-Covid period, the turnover of the companies studied increased by 8% during the study, and was 38% higher than the previous year. Favorable economic situation or not, the reduction in working hours has therefore in no way put companies in the red, on the contrary.
Bloomberg notes that measuring productivity can be tricky when dealing with facilities that work in very different areas, but the same organizations have found that the effect of reducing working hours without lowering pay has been positive. The absenteeism rate decreased from 0.6 to 0.4 days per month.
By participating in one of these pilot studies, the crowdfunding company Kickstarter does not seem to want to go back to the previous formula. “We have clearly seen a much higher level of commitment from our staff, higher than we have ever seen”explains Jon Leland, who also cites easier hiring and employees less eager to look elsewhere.
“The benefits are significant and outweigh the marginal efforts required to make the transition”Leland notes. However, there are some limitations to this study, Bloomberg points out. The first is that the companies that took part in the study chose to do so, which tends to show that their leaders had a rather favorable a priori view of the principle. They are also quite small in size, but larger ones may participate in the study in the coming months.
The site mainly notes that this four-day week “or their cousins, unlimited permission” it can be tricky for employees, who need to be empowered and empowered to really cut back on their engagement when they should be away.
The benefits went far beyond business economics. Employees reported less stress, anxiety and fatigue, as well as 24 more minutes of exercise per week, which brought them closer to the target recommended by international health authorities such as the WHO.
Icing on the cake, and not least: the team responsible for the study notes that the reduction of working hours is very likely to bring benefits to the environment and greenhouse gas emissions, in particular thanks to the mechanical reduction of work-home trips (and vice versa), not necessarily replaced by other leisure trips. In short: what are we waiting for to try?
