A theme that is starting to acquire an element of popularity in HR circles is whether there needs to be a change in the pattern of a normal working week. The question that is often posed is whether it would make more sense to work for 10 hours a day for four days a week or work for eight hours a day for five days a week.
However we could add variations to this theme, such as work less hours during the day and work for six days a week. Or work on a system of four and a half days and have Friday afternoons off. One could even add the idea so prevalent in the public sector in Malta of a longer working day in winter and a shorter working day in summer. The main objective of all these ideas is to provide a better work-life balance to employees.
Admittedly the summer half days for Malta’s public sector employees have been around longer than the concept of the work-life balance. France has a mandatory working week of 35 hours, which was introduced as a way of creating jobs for the unemployed.
What triggered my contribution this week was the news that Perpetual Garden, a firm in New Zealand, has experimented with working week that consists of a four days and announced what the results of this experiment have been. The news appeared in the Huffington Post. Its founder has announced that following this experiment, they noted a higher level of job satisfaction, a higher level of attachment of the employees to the company and have not seen a decrease in productivity. Moreover the stress level has decreased and the work-life balance has improved.
Proponents of a four-day working week push forward the idea of better work and less work and to have a better distribution of working hours in a society
A number of considerations can be made on this experiment, which is not the only one to have been tried. It needs to be pointed out that there are many jobs where a four-day week is simply not possible. Think of those jobs that have a high seasonality bias. Would customers be happy if they find that their favourite outlets are not open for seven days a week? Would tourists be satisfied if they find that their requirements cannot be met because there is a four day working week?
As such the point that needs to be kept in mind is that while employees may wish to spread their working week over less days, customers, in whatever shape or form they come, expect availability on a 24/7 basis. Reconciling these two positions may not be easy. Proponents of a four-day working week push forward the idea of better work and less work and to have a better distribution of working hours in a society. This could also reduce unemployment rates and provide a better quality of life to those already employed. They also claim that work productivity increases and as such, a four day working week would not necessarily mean higher costs for the employer.
On the other hand, a four-day working week may make internal communications in an organisation more difficult, may lead to unfinished jobs and may lead to delays in servicing customers. It may also lead to increased costs because of a fall in productivity resulting from a longer working day.
It should also be remembered that while a four day working week may suit many employees, equally a five day working week may also suit many employees who could be just as numerous. Thus a the four-day working week does not work for every employee and certainly not for every business.
Another consideration to make is that there are already several categories of employees who do not work a normal five-day week because of the circumstances of their job. For instance, certain transport employees work less than an average 40-hour week because of specific rules related to their job. Those that work on a shift basis, may be working a shift pattern that enables them to work three days one week and four days another week.
Trying to turn a four-day week into an employee value proposition would indeed be very short sighted. The real issue is how can there be more flexibility in working patterns of employees. That flexibility could include flexible working hours, flexible working days, remote working, and other initiatives. We need to keep one fundamental question in mind: is everyone capable of regulating oneself to deliver what is expected of them?