It was a small but significant moment, but I remember it well. It was a Thursday night when I deleted my repeat alarm for Friday mornings. In October last year, I implemented a 4DWW for my own company.
At first, a 4DWW was only a theory as there is always an omnipresent to-do list as the owner of a company. At best, I could claim a Friday afternoon, but I reconciled that working a four-and-a-half-day week was better than a 6-day week.
Now, months later, taking a full Friday off is becoming easier and finally feels like a significant lifestyle change. And therein lies the complexity of shifting to a 4DWW: it’s more challenging than you think (on both sides of the employment contract), and it is a gradual and holistic shift away from an entrenched concept of what ‘work’ is and why we do it.
The case for a shorter workweek
For some bizarre reason, the corporate world, globally, still follows the guidelines of the American Public Contracts Act of 1936, which cemented the 40-hour workweek (negotiated by unions in the late 19th century) and the 5-day workweek (pioneered by Ford motors in the 1920s). It remained the template for the 20th-century office worker. Why we still apply something designed for factory workers a century ago to digital workers in the 21st century begs to question.
A 2014 Stanford University study found that working 35 hours per week is the tipping point before productivity declines. Meanwhile, experts suggest we should only be working six hours per day, especially if we are tethered to a computer screen. Your energy cannot be sustained for eight hours. Screen fatigue – and its cousin, Zoom fatigue – is real.
A decade-long study on Swedish workers found that reduced working hours positively affected restorative sleep, stress, memory, negative emotions, and exhaustion. The knock-on benefits for employers are obvious.
Redefining productivity
A skewed notion of ‘productivity’ clouds the debate around a 4DWW. Knee-jerk reactions to the 4DWW policy are based on the deluded notion that if workers clock in and out at a prescribed time, that time spent (under the watchful gaze of a helicopter manager) will be productive.
Two years of working from home has effectively decoupled ‘work’ from ‘place of work’. It is time to discard a century-old template of workforce management. Outcomes are a better measure than productivity in the work anywhere/work anytime era we are migrating to.
For example, instead of a digital marketer publishing a specified number of blog posts a week, isn’t it preferable to have a goal to increase web traffic by a certain percentage and within a specific timeframe?
A global movement: countries that have embarked on a 4DWW
Iceland was the pioneer. Between 2015 and 2019, 2,500 government workers had their traditional 40-hour workweek reduced to either 35 or 36 hours, with the same pay. The trials were made across various types of workplaces: preschools, offices, social service providers, and hospitals.
Spain: In March last year, the Spanish government announced a 4DWW trial consisting of a 32-hour workweek for three years without any cut in workers' pay.
Scotland: In September 2021, Scotland joined the movement. Their trial aimed to reduce hours by 20% while productivity will be measured in output per week so that pay can remain the same.
The UAE: From 1 January this year, the UAE slashed its official workweek to four-and-a-half days. No trials, just immediate implementation.
Belgium: In February this year, Belgium embarked on a 4DWW. Employees, however, need to maintain a 38-hour working week, meaning that they would have to work longer for each of the four days to get an additional day off.
However, the new labour accord also introduced the right to disconnect after working hours, similar to the ‘right to rest’ ruling in Spain, banning bosses from contacting employees outside of working hours.
Companies trialling with governments observing
Some countries, not yet bold enough to implement a 4DWW as government policy, nevertheless support companies that want to embark on a trial and are watching closely from the sidelines.
Ireland: In January this year, 20 companies in Ireland signed up for a 6-month pilot to trial a 4DWW with no loss in pay.
New Zealand: In 2020, New Zealand’s prime minister suggested employers consider a four-day working week and other flexible working options. Unilever New Zealand started a year-long four-day workweek trial later that year, but the staff at Perpetual Guardian have been working four days a week since 2018.
Japan: In June 2021, the Japanese government launched an initiative for companies to trail a 4DWW. Panasonic accepted, as did Microsoft Japan, which had already initiated the ‘Work-Life Choice Challenge’ in 2019, where the company gave its employees a variety of flexible work options.
America and Canada: In April this year, 35 companies will undergo a 6-month trial organised by non-profit 4 Day Week Global (a global foundation that funds research into 4DWWs and the future of work and workplace wellbeing). Nearly 2,000 employees will be receiving a paid day off weekly during the trial.
The UK: In June this year, 3,000 workers at 60 UK companies will start a 6-month 4DWW trial – one of the world’s largest trials – facilitated by 4 Day Week Global in partnership with Think Tank, Autonomy, the 4 Day Week UK Campaign, and researchers at Cambridge and Oxford Universities, as well as Boston College.
Missing the point
India: The Indian government is considering a shorter workweek, but employees would have to meet a minimum of 48 work hours per week, i.e., 12 hours a day. If implemented, the employees would also face a reduction in take-home salary with a higher Provident Fund.
The other extreme: Arup’s seven-day week
It’s not as crazy as it sounds. A new working concept – Work Unbound – was launched in October 2021 by Arup, which allows all of its 6,000 employees in the UK to spread their core work hours over seven days rather than between Monday and Friday.
The policy was implemented in 2019 after a three-month trial in the company’s offices in Queensland, Australia, and Liverpool in the UK. They discovered that 35% of the workforce chose to do some weekend work.
Stakester, an online skills-based competition platform for gamers in America, has also adopted this ‘work anytime’ policy.
What a 4DWW feels like: lessons learnt at Flux Trends
It is not simply a policy switch but a radical change in mindset and that adjustment takes time, not just logistically but reassessing deeply entrenched notions of work and reward.
A rigid 4DWW will not work for every company, but many templates are being tested. Some companies give every alternate Friday off; some simply reduce daily working hours but keep to a five-day workweek, while others allow different teams to choose a day off in the week to maintain workflow. Some companies start very tentatively by simply implementing a no-meeting day on Fridays. Baby steps are still steps.
The point is not how you approach a 4DWW but rather what you imagine the future of work to be. The pandemic has fast-tracked the need for corporate introspection in terms of HR, and that introspection should be taking place in every C-suite because this inflection point hinges on a very different style of leadership and management. For me, this is framing innovation as a mindset rather than an entity.
For Arup to adjust to their Work Unbound concept, coordinating teams meant that people had to adapt to the idea that they were sharing their movements rather than being monitored. Trust becomes pivotal. And if you don’t trust your workforce, you’ve hired the wrong people.
Dion Chang is the founder of Flux Trends
For more trends, visit: www.fluxtrends.com
