Four day work week? How about it!!!

Today's Friday, and a) if I were still working; and b) I worked at a company that offered a four-day work week, I'd likely be off.

Of course, as an ancient pensioner, I'm off anyway, but it's still a lovely thought. (The idea of the day off, not of working full time.)

It's been nearly twenty years since I worked in corporate. 

At the last place I worked FT, I had a 4.5-ish day arrangement. Basically, on Friday's, I worked from home. Back then, it wasn't that common, and the deal I had was that I'd be available for meetings (via conference bridge) up until noon or so, but that the afternoons were my own. I was able to swing this because my old boss, who had just joined the company, had recruited me, and the only way I was taking that job was if I had this flexibility. By then, I'd had it with corporate: the commuting, the politicking, the managing teams. In order to agree to another corporate gig, the deal had to be sweetened. 

The 4.5 day work week was the sweetener. (And it was basically a four-day work week unless I had a meeting scheduled. All I did most Fridays was answer a few emails. I was able to do my job - and do it well - quite nicely in four days, thank you.)

When I took the job, I predicted that I would be there for a year-and-a-half. Two max. Knowing my old boss as I did, I figured that this would be about how long he would last, and that my tenure would be inextricably tied to his fortunes there. Turns out I was correct on both counts. 

Turned out well. I met a couple of great colleagues there - colleagues who became friends - and it all worked out for the best when I began freelancing a year-and-a-half after I joined my last company. 

But while I was there, what made it tolerable - I didn't have any direct reports, but the commute was awful, and the politics were extreme - was that I didn't have to be there on Friday.

The notion of the four-day work week has been kicking around for the while, and the pandemic has accelerated acceptance of different work arrangements. (Work from home, anyone?)

And now there's some proof emerging from the U.K. that the four-day work week works.

Dozens of companies [with a total of nearly 3,000 employees] there took part in the world’s largest trial of the four-day workweek — and a majority of supervisors and employees liked it so much they’ve decided to keep the arrangement. In fact, 15 percent of the employees who participated said “no amount of money” would convince them to go back to working five days a week. (Source: Washington Post)

A couple of aspects of the experiment: the number of hours worked per day wasn't increased (the average worked was, in fact, 32 hours a week), and employees received their full pre-experiment pay. 

Not surprisingly, employee satisfaction increased, with participants reporting "a variety of benefits related to their sleep, stress levels, personal lives and mental health." 

A majority of employees who experienced the four-day workweek didn’t want to go back: At the end of the pilot, they were asked how much money they would have to receive from their next employer to go back to a five-day week. Nearly a third said they would require a 26- to 50-percent increase and 8 percent said they would want 50 percent higher pay.

And the companies reported that resignations were down, and that there they experienced no negative impact on revenue. 

Of the 61 companies that took part in the trial, 56 said they would continue to implement four-day workweeks after the pilot ended, 18 of which said the shift would be permanent. Two companies are extending the trial. Only three companies did not plan to carry on with any element of the four-day workweek.

The experiment doesn't have universal applicability: the companies that participated tended to be on the small size, and the positions involved were largely "white collar." (Two-thirds of participants had at minimum an undergraduate degree.)

Still, it's interesting to think about the four-day work week gaining more acceptance, at least in many "knowledge worker" settings. 

But why not more widely?

Many nurses already work three-day weeks, albeit with longer daily shifts. Other professions that need to be staffed 24/7, or thereabouts - customer service, retail - could certainly do the same. And lots of other jobs seem as if they would lend themselves to a four-day work week. Manufacturing work, for example. 

The shift to a four-day work week wouldn't be without problems. 

Would schools only operate four-days a week? That wouldn't seem to work out, unless parents were all working schedules that would accommodate the kids being at home an extra day, or unless schools stayed open the fifth day for daycare, not learning.

Speaking of daycare, if families only needed daycare four days a week, how would that work out for the daycare centers that financially require a five day model? Do they just raise their daily fees by 25%, so that none of the dollar benefits accrue to the parents. 

I don't see the four-day work week being widely adopted at a large scale anytime soon. But:

There is precedent for a large-scale change in the standard workweek: As The Washington Post has previously noted, before the Great Depression, it wasn’t uncommon for employees in the United States to work six-day weeks. The 40-hour workweek was first codified into U.S. law in 1938. The argument put forward by groups such as 4 Day Week Global is that “we’re overdue for an update.”

I'm all for it.  Not that life hasn't always been stressful and demanding in its own way, but modern life just seems more so. Or maybe we're just starting to acknowledge that we'd all be better off if people had more downtime: more me-time, more family time.

So here's hoping!