The pandemic completely shook up how we work. I know people who had been working from home before lockdown, but many companies and workers had to figure out new ways of working remotely, and fast. And largely we did, much to the chagrin of Malcolm Gladwell and Martha Stewart. Now that we’ve lived through having to reformat the work landscape by necessity, there are those who say it’s time to rethink other parts of the system. Like Dale Whelehan, CEO of 4 Day Week Global, whose firm advocates for switching to a four-day workweek, and coaches other companies on how to make the transition. Australia, Europe, and Japan have already started trying it out, and even in the US the number of full-time employees working four-day weeks rose from 5% in 2020 to 8% in 2022, according to Gallup. Whelehan recently spoke to The Associated Press about the 411 of four-day workweeks:
Why should companies make the switch? The bigger question is, why shouldn’t they? There’s a lot of evidence to suggest we need to do something fundamentally different in the way we work. We have issues of burnout. We have a recruitment and retention crisis in many industries. We have increased stress within our workforce, leading to health issues, issues with work-life balance, work-family conflict. We have people sitting in cars for long periods, contributing to a climate crisis. We have certain parts of the population that are able to work longer hours and therefore be rewarded for that, creating further inequity within our societies. Lastly, we look at the implications that stress actually has on long-term health. We know that it’s linked to issues like cardiovascular disease, to cancer, to diabetes. So stress is something not to be taken lightly, and it’s only rising in our world of work.
Industrialization of the workforce brought about the 40-hour workweek: 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, leading to the need for a five-day week as opposed to a six-day week. By the time I entered into 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 can’t withstand the same level of hours of work as our muscles in our body might be able to. So it’s that mismatch between an outdated work structure of 40 hours, rooted in very physical labor, and what is now a highly cognitive workforce.
How does all the work still get done? The reduction of working time brings about productivity gains by people having naturally more time to rest and recover, allowing them to come back into a new week more engaged and well-rested. That’s one way in which you see productivity gains. … When we work with organizations, we use what’s called a 100-80-100 principle. So 100% pay for 80% time for 100% output. We ask organizations to design their trials in that sort of philosophy: How can you keep your business at the same level or improve while working less? The fundamental change we see is, let’s move away from thinking about productivity as how much time it takes to get something done, versus focusing on what outcomes we know drive businesses forward.
This is everything my elementary school-aged self ever dreamed of. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed school. But there was no denying the profound difference between a two-day and three-day weekend. Right now my day job insists requires that I be in the office four days, and then I work from home on the fifth day. Which is not the same thing as Whelehan is proposing! I need a new day job, but I digress… I found the backstory on how we got to the 40-hour week fascinating, as well as Whelehan’s assertion that our brains cannot work a 40-week the same way our bodies used to. You mean it’s not just the brain fog from overeating at lunch?! I love science! I highly recommend reading the whole piece — Whelehan also describes how the four-day week supports women in the workforce (who are often only paid part-time wages for still doing the same amount of work as their full-time colleagues), and he suggests that the biggest office time-sucks are meetings. Amen. I wonder if I can schedule a meeting for him to speak with my boss…
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