Company experiments, alternatively, have yielded clearer — and infrequently extra optimistic — outcomes.
Final 12 months, for instance, a New Zealand property planning advisory agency with about 240 staff earned headlines all over the world after discovering {that a} trial four-day week had boosted efficiency. The 2-month experiment was so profitable that the enterprise, Perpetual Guardian, made the change everlasting.
“You’re not simply getting the identical productiveness, you’re getting greater productiveness,” the corporate’s proprietor, Andrew Barnes, mentioned.
Mr. Barnes was so satisfied by the teachings of the experiment that he and a colleague, Charlotte Lockhart, launched a nonprofit this 12 months to encourage companies all over the world to undertake a shorter week.
‘Work is altering’
Elusive as it might appear, there should be hope for the four-day workweek.
Traditionally, experiments with the thought have tended to concentrate on its results on worker happiness and work-life stability. However the Perpetual Guardian trial final 12 months and the take a look at carried out by Microsoft Japan this 12 months targeted on a profit that may inspire employers: productiveness.
“It’s making it safer for chief executives, for boards, for firms all over the world to say, ‘Properly, really, I’m not simply doing this as a result of it’s a good factor for my staff, I also can do that as a result of it’s good for enterprise,’” Mr. Barnes mentioned.
On the similar time, there’s a widespread want amongst staff to work shorter weeks.
About two-thirds of employees favor a compressed workweek, in response to current surveys by the staffing firm Robert Half and the public radio program Marketplace. And a poll conducted last year by The Workforce Institute, a suppose tank at Kronos, a maker of labor drive administration software program, discovered that 34 p.c of worldwide employees wished a four-day workweek in comparison with 28 p.c who have been pleased with a five-day one. (Some unions have pushed for shorter weeks, too.)