What it looks like to work One less day per week and same pay? this four-day work weekIt is something owned by 33 companies and 906 workers from the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand and Canada, which is seen as a desirable utopia by the vast majority of workers and a naive and economically unsustainable idea by many. is put into practice. sentenced for a period of six months. is he first international study published about the pros and cons of this reduction in working hours. Results of the study prepared by the ‘think tank’ 4-Day Week The study, which also included researchers from Boston College, University College Dublin and Cambridge University, reveals that the profit bills of companies are not adversely affected, and that the mental health and happiness of the workforce improves in parallel.
The four-day-a-week debate is raging in Western economies. Countries such as the United Kingdom or Portugal have launched pilot programs with the government budget to finance companies implementing this new organizational model. In Spain, this experiment begins this week, and the Ministry of Industry will help up to 150,000 euros to around 60 or 70 companies that cut their working hours while maintaining their salaries for at least two years. The only similar pilot project promoted by the Spanish public administration, ValenciaWhere Generalitat started subsidizing companies a year ago.
The results, recently published by The 4 Day Week magazine, prove that workers are most beneficiaries of the reduction in working hours. sanity from the workers. According to the interviews with 906 employees who participated in the pilot, stress, burning sensation (‘burnout’), fatigue and conflicts caused by the inability to reconcile work and private life are reduced.
It’s an improvement, at least for employees who don’t harm companies in the cases participating in the pilot. In fact, the companies analyzed increased their profits by an average of 8.1%. From the time they start piloting to completion. Three out of four people say they’ve decided to continue the four-day work week beyond the experiment.
Economist, associate professor at the University of Valencia and one of the designers of the Valencia Generalitat pilot, Joan Sanchisrequires caution when reading the results. “They reflect a set of intuitions that are not strictly scientific, but they allow us to see what the potential implications are,” he agrees. For example, all companies that implement the 4-day work week increase their income statements by 8.1%, as the Test lacks control groups with similar companies that do not apply the same reduction in hours, but shows that it is congruent to work less and keep companies competitive.
How is the 4-day week applied?
“processes reorganization “It is mostly successful in reducing work and unproductive moments,” the researchers point out. That is, the maximumdead times‘ and employees have to work harder the rest of the day. The results show that workers perceive slightly more intensity and workload during the four workdays, but that doesn’t mean they have to drive home or accumulate more stress to get that part of the job done. or difficulty with tasks.
“One of the main risks is not managing this concentrated business well,” Sanchis warns. So the cure is worse than the disease, and working one day less will result in burning the worker. “Working one day less is not enough, it should mean a change of mindset in both management and workers,” he adds. The ‘feel’ according to the surveyburnoutWhile it decreased in 67.6% of workers – classified as an occupational disease by WHO – it increased in 20.5%. In terms of stress, the balance is slightly less precise as it decreased among 32.4% of workers and increased by 16.7%.
What do workers earn?
The balance between the work force of working one day less is not surprising: 97% He wants to continue the test. Working less than one work day a week means one extra day for you. free time. Specifically, employees spend less than an hour per week commuting. Before piloting, workers spent an average of 3.6 hours per week commuting, after piloting that figure drops to 2.6.
More time spent doing more to exerciseinside sleep better spending more time at night and with family or hobbies. Employees, on average, get almost 24 more minutes of physical exercise per week. The proportion of employees who sleep less than seven hours a night drops significantly from 41.3% to 35.1%. Before the pilot, 45% of those surveyed said they wanted to spend more time with their families, but six months later that percentage dropped to 25%. All this results in more happiness. Before starting the experiment, participants rated their lives an average of 6.6 out of 10. After six months of missing one day a week, this score rises to 7.5.
And what do companies earn?
One of the most recurring concerns among company executives is, absenteeism from work. That is, the absence of part of the workforce mainly due to parental illness or leave. Such absenteeism has traditionally increased in times of economic prosperity in Spain and decreased in times of crisis. insecurity workers tending to their jobs—the fear that “if I fail, they’ll fire me”. In this regard, the experience of the four-day workweek shows that the lower the workload, the lower the absenteeism. Specifically, this decreased by 30% between samples during the six-month period in which the experiment was conducted, but the small sample size means that the study’s authors cannot categorically confirm that these percentages can be estimated.
Where researchers are unable to get definitive answers is the question of whether reducing the working day increases the holding capacity of companies. In this sense, the decrease in the rate of unplanned employee turnover is insignificant. selection bias So companies that are willing to voluntarily participate in a pilot for a four-day workweek are likely already attractive workplaces for employees.