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Companies considering the option of letting employees work a four-day week hope to reduce job burnout and retain talent seeking a better work-life balance, according to the chief executive of an organization promoting the idea. The trend is catching on in Australia and Europe, says Dale Whelehan, CEO of 4 Day Week Global, which coaches companies through a months-long process of reducing their employees’ work hours. Japan launched a campaign in August encouraging employers to reduce work hours to four days.
U.S. companies have not widely adopted the four-day week, but that could change. About a third of U.S. CEOs surveyed by accounting firm KPMG in 2024 said they are exploring alternative work schedules such as a four-day or four-and-a-half-day workweek. The Associated Press spoke with Whelehan about the reasons companies might want to consider the change. His comments have been edited for length and clarity.
Question: Why should organizations adopt a four-day work week?
Answer: The big question is, why shouldn’t they? There’s a lot of evidence that we need to make some fundamental changes to the way we work. We have a burnout problem. We have a recruitment and retention crisis across many industries. Stress has increased in our workforce. That’s leading to health problems, work-life balance problems, work-family conflict problems. We have people sitting in the car for long hours, which contributes to the climate crisis. There are parts of our population that are able to work long hours and so they’re rewarded for that, which creates further inequality in our societies. Finally, we see the effects that stress actually has on long-term health. We know it’s linked to problems like heart disease, cancer, diabetes. So stress is something that should not be taken lightly, and it’s increasing in our world of work.
Q: Why is the 40-hour work week so common?
To understand where we are now, let’s take a step back in time to the time before the industrial age. My grandfather was a farmer, working seven days a week and having to be on site all the time. It was very long hours, but he also had a lot of autonomy.
When my father entered the workforce, he was a technician in a mechanical role. And he was expected to mass produce products. As a result he was not given the rewards that come from farming, but he was paid a salary. That change from my grandfather’s time to my father’s time gave rise to a discipline called management. And management, led by Frederick Taylor, was looking at the relationship between fatigue and performance. A lot of scientific studies were done to try to understand that relationship, which resulted in the need for a five-day week instead of a six-day week. By the time I joined the workforce, we no longer had a very physical, laborious workforce. It’s highly cognitive and highly emotional.
The fundamental physiological difference is that our brain as a muscle cannot work as many hours as the muscles in our body can. So there is this mismatch between the old 40-hour work structure, which was very physical, and what is now a highly cognitive workforce.
Q: How can companies increase revenue when employees work fewer hours?
Answer: Decreasing work time increases productivity because people naturally have more time to rest and recuperate, allowing them to come back to the new week more engaged and well-rested. This is one way you can see an increase in productivity. Another is the fundamental shift that organizations go through when transitioning to a four-day week.
When we work with organizations, we use the 100-80-100 principle. So 100% pay for 100% output 80% of the time. We ask organizations to design their tests around this philosophy: How can you keep your business at the same level or improve while doing less work? The fundamental change we see is to move away from thinking about productivity as how long it takes to get something done, and instead focus on what we know are the outcomes that move businesses forward.
Q: How does a four-day workweek support equality?
Answer: Women make up a disproportionate number of part-time workers. As a result, women typically face pay cuts. This is despite the fact that, based on the evidence we have seen in the tests, these part-time workers are producing just as much as their five-day-week counterparts.
In trials of a four-day week, everyone travels. So we see men taking on a greater level of household or parenting responsibilities. The alternative scenario is that women work part-time, reducing their pay. Men have to work longer hours in higher-paid and more stressful jobs to make up the loss. … It just creates a vicious circle.
Question: What types of work can be eliminated to increase productivity?
Answer: Meetings. We are addicted to meetings. It has gotten worse since the pandemic. I think a big reason for this is the culture of indecision. There is a sense of indecisiveness, and so the process is delayed or multiple people are involved in the process so that everyone has responsibility and thus no one has responsibility. And that is not good when it comes to the larger issue of productivity.
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