The four-day work week. We’ve all heard so much about it and the touted benefits for both employers and employees for productivity, performance and overall wellbeing. But, once you peel back the discursive layers surrounding its online chatter, is it actually a feasible way to run a business in the long term?
Of course, most people working within a company will attest to the benefits of working a shorter week and having a longer break, but what does the data tell us? Is it viable for every company and every industry?
In order to answer this question, it’s important not just to examine where it has worked, but also where it hasn’t. There are inherent lessons we can learn from both the successful and unsuccessful trials. We should also consider its applicability within the South African work context.
Ok, let’s look purely at the data, sentiment aside. According to Gallup’s study on the success and efficacy of the four-day workweek, the overarching findings suggest that the four-day work week does produce positive outcomes in the form of higher productivity and lower burnout levels.
Iceland, which introduced the experiment in several companies between 2015 and 2019, reported that reducing work hours without cutting pay boosted employee productivity and performance within restructured working hours and improved the quality of work produced.
In a similar study, Microsoft Japan introduced a four-day workweek in 2019 and reported a 40% boost in productivity. The UK ran a study in 2022, with more than 60 companies piloting a four-day workweek structure and reported a boost in productivity. However, it’s interesting to note that in the UK trial results, 34% of companies reported a slight improvement in productivity, while only 15% reported a significant increase in productivity. The remaining 46% of participating companies reported no changes in productivity.
This suggests that working a shorter week doesn’t automatically result in an outstanding boom in employee performance. It improves it, no doubt, but companies also need to be realistic in their expectations regarding how impactful a shorter working week will be in terms of improving output and results.
It also begs the question – does the four-day workweek only work in certain industries? Or is it the unique business structure itself that makes working shorter hours feasible?
As beneficial as it’s promoted to be, some companies experienced negative results after trialling a four-day workweek. A nursing company in Sweden abandoned its four-day working week experiment because it simply wasn’t cost-effective.
This is something worth noting – reducing the number of hours that employees work per week can result in a company having to hire more employees to complete work, particularly in customer or patient-facing organisations consisting of rotational shift work.
Some UK companies also abandoned the four-day workweek because they simply couldn’t afford to give their employees an extra day off every week. Others abandoned the experiment because they found that it actually increased employee stress levels instead of reducing them. A longer weekend was completely offset by a shorter and far more stressful working week.
This goes to show that the four-day workweek isn’t some cure-all panacea for employee burnout and wellbeing. It’s a model that works for some companies but not all.
Looking at it through a South African lens, the results are interesting. In March 2023, 28 South African businesses participated in a study in which they’d reduce working hours from 100% to 80% (four days instead of five) while maintaining 100% pay.
Businesses ranged from tax companies to marketing agencies and the results found a 10.5% average increase in company revenue over the course of the trial and a 49% boost in employee productivity as well as a 9% decrease in employee absenteeism.
However, most companies weren’t able to successfully reach the 20% reduction in working hours, with most averaging around 12%. Most companies also didn’t implement the conventional 3-day weekend, instead choosing to give employees a midweek day off. Other companies didn’t offer an entire day off but rather restructured their Monday to Friday working hours, so employees worked shorter days.
While the evidence overwhelmingly points to the benefits of introducing a four-day work week, it’s essential to remember that it’s not a cut-and-paste solution. Some industries simply cannot operate on the model, while others can’t financially sustain it in the long term. For some employees, it reduces levels of stress and burnout, for others, it amplifies it.
Treat the four-day work week like any other business model – it’s not perfect and won’t transition perfectly to every organisation. But within that, there is room to experiment further. Instead of giving employees an extra day off every week, employers could give a day off each month or bi-weekly. Additionally, reducing the work day by one hour could also be a reasonable middle ground in aiding employee wellbeing and reducing stress and burnout levels.
If the four-day workweek isn’t feasible for you, remember that there’s room for alterations based on your organisational and employee needs. Don’t feel pressured to squeeze your company into an operating model that simply won’t work for you, rather examine your current structure and identify optimal strategies that will yield positive results for everyone.
© Donna Rachelson. All Rights Reserved
