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When Covid-19 struck and working from home became the new norm, employees started questioning the traditional five-day work week.
Reports from companies that trialled it out displayed a happier workforce, less turnover, and better productivity. And now, there's proof that these benefits are here to stay.
The data came from a 2022 UK trial that was organised by the advocacy group 4 Day Week Global. In a six-month experiment, 61 companies moved their employees to a four-day workweek with no reduction in pay.
To this day, 54 of those companies still have this policy and over half of these have declared the arrangement permanent.
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The researchers of the experiment conducted follow-up surveys to further understand the benefits of the four-day workweek.
Sociologist Juliet Schor of Boston College, pointed out improvements in employee physical and mental health and work-life balance, as well as higher job satisfaction and general life satisfaction. There was also evidence of burnout reductions which have been maintained over the past year.
'The results are really stable. It's not a novelty effect. People are feeling really on top of their work with this new model,' Schor added.
For companies that want to adopt the new workweek, they need to know that it 'absolutely doesn't happen by magic,' according to Nicci Russell, CEO of Waterwise, a London-based water conservancy non-profit company.
'You can't just drop a day and carry on as usual, because how stressful would that be?'
Russell shares that after some initial bumps, they found ways to manage business-as-usual, whilst allowing all 10 employees to clock off on Fridays.
They cut meeting times to 30 minutes and made sure they started on the dot to appease everyone.
Additionally, the company carved out focused work blocks on their calendars, one of which is declared 'Monk Mode Mondays.'
Other companies have adopted a different policy in the case that everyone having the same Friday off wouldn't have been possible.
At Merthyr Valleys Homes in South Wales, Ruth Llewellyn, who led the pilot at the housing cooperative, said that some of its employees have a set day off every week whilst others are on a rolling schedule - whichever is most flexible to them. This allows its workers to work the same hours, whilst allowing time for personal responsibilities like school drop-offs and pick-ups.
Employees are more motivated, employee performance is unaffected, and absences for illnesses have dropped, Llewellyn says. As a result, Llewellyn hopes to at one point make the term permanent.
Only time will tell which or how many other companies will adopt the new working arrangement.
