Today's post comes to us from Neil Reichenberg, Former Executive Director of the International Public Management Association for Human Resources (IPMA”HR). Neil is currently teaching a course on human resource management in the public sector at George Mason University.

Recently, the Spanish government announced that it will launch what is believed to be the first national pilot of a four day workweek. The pilot, which is scheduled to begin in September, will last for three years and will result in the employees of participating companies being paid for five days while working only four days per week.

The Spanish government intends to use 50 million euros from the European Union's Coronavirus Recovery Fund to finance the project. The government believes that up to 200 companies with a total of 3,000 ”“ 6,000 employees will participate in the pilot. The Spanish government will subsidize 100% of the employer's costs in the first year of the trial, which would be reduced in the subsequent two years of the pilot.

A 2018 global survey, The Case for a Four Day Workweek, conducted by The Workforce Institute at UKG found that 45% of full”time employees say it should take less than 5 hours per day to do their job if they work uninterrupted, while 72% said they would work four days or less per week if pay remained constant.


There have been some private and public sector experiments with shorter workweeks. In 2019, Microsoft Japan gave 2,300 employees three”day weekends for five consecutive weeks in August. It was called the Work Life Choice Challenge. To assist with time management, the company reduced the maximum duration of meetings to 30 minutes and cut attendance to no more than five employees. The results were positive: productivity as measured by sales per
employee increased by 39.9% in August 2019 as compared to August 2018. With the office being closed one day per week, employees printed almost 60% fewer pages and used 23% less electricity. Employees were very enthusiastic with 92% (!) indicating they liked the four”day workweek.


Similarly, in 2018, Perpetual Guardian, a New Zealand company launched an eight”week trial of a four”day workweek for its 240 employees. The staff worked 30 hours per week but were paid for 37.5 hours. They were asked to deliver the same amount of output during the shortened workweeks. The company engaged two universities to measure the outcomes which were positive. Productivity remained the same, while work”life balance increased significantly, and
stress levels were reduced. Andrew Barnes, the CEO of Perpetual Guardian was so enthusiastic about the four”day workweek that he launched 4 Day Week Global, a not”for”profit that provides a platform for those interested in supporting the idea of the four”day week as part of the future of work.


In the public sector, Gothenburg, Sweden launched an 18”month trial in 2015 at an elder care home where staff worked 6”hour days rather than the usual 8 hours per day without taking a pay cut. The trial was designed to see if reducing the number of hours per shift would result in improved patient care. The results were positive, with patient interactions improving and employee engagement increasing. They also saw a significant reduction in the number of sick days taken by employees. Since staffing is required around the clock, the elder care home had to hire 17 additional employees. Due to the increased employment costs, the trial was not made permanent.


The current pandemic has caused increased stress, anxiety and burnout for employees who want to work for organizations that provide flexibility and are concerned with their well”being. Employees in participating Spanish companies are likely to be enthusiastic about the reduced workweek program. The questions for employers will be whether productivity remains the same, the reduced workweek makes it easier to recruit new employees, turnover is reduced, and employees are more engaged. As the government's financial support of the pilot is reduced, will employers continue to see benefit to the program?

At the very least, this new Spanish experiment is an example of a sincere desire to re-think a basic assumption of working life, something that I think employers everywhere are doing, to some degree, as we think about working life post-pandemic.

Today's post is submitted by Joyce Maroney, Executive Director of the Workforce Institute at Kronos. Here, we revisit the feasibility of the 4-day work week.

Last year, we published global research regarding workers' attitudes toward their jobs and their managers. We also asked them about how they spent their time at work. One of the outcomes of this research was the finding that 78% of respondents said they could do their job in fewer than 7 hours per day if they could work uninterrupted. If pay remained constant, 34% said their ideal work week would be a 4-day work week while only 25% would stick with their current 5-day week.

In recent weeks, Microsoft Japan announced that it had piloted a 4-day work week with a group of its employees last August. Their results were impressive. Productivity (measured in sales/head) rose by 40% while electricity costs fell by 23%. In order to assist the productivity of the workers during their shorter week, those in the pilot limited their meetings to 30" and limited meeting attendees to no more than 5 people. Workers were encouraged to limit emails and use instant chat where possible.

There have been other successful experiments with 4-day work weeks, however the Microsoft story reinvigorated the discussion lately. Perpetual Guardian in New Zealand implemented the 4-day work week permanently after a successful pilot. In fact, it's CEO Andrew Barnes has launched a not-for-profit community called 4 day week to help others do the same.

I recently was interviewed on NPR affiliate KPCC to discuss the 4-day work week and how to make it work for employers and workers. During the broadcast, you'll also hear from a number of listeners who shared their own stories of the benefits of a shorter work week. You can listen in on the player below. Enjoy!

Has your organization tried to implement more flexible scheduling options for your workers? How did those trials turn out?

I recently had the pleasure of making a guest appearance on the Human Resources for Small Business podcast hosted by Brandon Laws. In the episode Are Shorter Workweeks on the Horizon?  we discussed the results of our 2018 global research that revealed most employees felt they could do their jobs in much less than 40 hours a week.

Our data suggested that there is a lot that organizations can do to remove the obstacles that get in the way of people's productivity. I talked to Brandon about the implications of those findings and what leaders can do to create cultures where employee experience can be a competitive differentiator in the wars to attract and retain talent.

Brandon is a great host, and I hope you'll take a few minutes to check out our conversation. You can listen to the podcast on the player below. You can find and follow Brandon's podcast on itunes or google.

Today's post is submitted by Joyce Maroney, Executive Director of the Workforce Institute.

I was recently a guest on Matt Alder's podcast, Recruiting Future.  We chatted about the results of our recent research that raised the question of whether many jobs could be done in fewer than the traditional 40 hours per week.

During our interview we discussed the research findings and how employers can use these insights to recruit and retain the talent they need. The topics we cover include:

• The conundrum of longer hours and reduced productivity

• What are the key interruptions that effect productively

• How can employers improve the situation

• Is a four day week possible and/or practical?

• The role of leadership

• The logistics of offering unlimited holidays

• Do attitudes vary from country to country?

You can listen to our conversation on the player below:



Today's post is courtesy of Joyce Maroney, executive director of the Workforce Institute at Kronos.

When Labor Day weekend passes in the US, it marks the official end of summer.  Even if the hot weather continues, it's not long until the days grow shorter, and it can feel like work consumes more of your week.  Even if you enjoy your job, you may spend more time on it than you'd like.  Especially on those days when you work all day and don't feel you've accomplished as much as you needed to.

Recently, we asked workers around the world about their attitudes toward their jobs and their managers.  We collected data from over 2700 employees in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, India, Mexico, the U.K., and the U.S.  On September 4th, we released the results from the first part of this research, related to how workers are spending their time at work.

We found that even though most workers (75 percent) say they have enough time in the workday to finish their work, nearly two in five (37 percent) work more than 40 hours each week and 71 percent claim work interferes with their personal lives.

If people generally have enough time to get their jobs done, why are they working overtime - even to the point of getting burned out?  

Even though 71 percent of workers accomplish what they want to at work every day or almost every day, three in four employees (79 percent) suffer from at least some burnout at work.  Unreasonable workload (26 percent) was the top reason cited for burnout, followed by “not enough time in the day to get job done” (25 percent); lack of skilled co-workers (24 percent); a negative workplace culture / toxic team (24 percent); and unfair compensation (21 percent).

More than half of all employees worldwide (53 percent) feel pressure to work longer hours or pick up extra shifts to grow their career - yet oftentimes that pressure comes from within. Of those who feel pressure to work longer, 60 percent put pressure on themselves while the rest say that pressure comes solely from their managers.

What are people spending time on at work?

When asked what they spend the majority of their workday doing, individual contributors (56 percent) and people managers (28 percent) both listed servicing customers as their top task.  The next highest-rated workday tasks for individual contributors include collaborating with co-workers (42 percent), administrative work (35 percent), manual labor (33 percent), and responding to emails (31 percent), while people managers list attending meetings (27 percent), administrative work (27 percent), collaborating with co-workers (26 percent), and responding to emails (26 percent) as the top ways they spend their workday.

How much time isn't contributing to meeting their objectives? 

Almost nine out of 10 employees (86 percent) say they lose time each day on work-specific tasks unrelated to their core job, with 41 percent of full-time employees wasting more than an hour a day on these extraneous activities. Additionally, 40 percent of employees say they lose an hour-plus each day on administrative tasks that do not drive value for their organization.

“Fixing a problem not caused by me” (22 percent) and administrative work (17 percent) were the top two answers given by full-time employees when asked what they waste the most time on at work. Meetings (12 percent), email (11 percent), and customer issues (11 percent) round out the top five time-wasters.

So what about that shorter work week?

Our respondents would spend less time at work if they could.  One-third of employees (35 percent) would take a 20 percent pay-cut to work one day less per week.  According to this recent New York Times article, A 4-Day Workweek? A Test Run Shows a Surprising Resultthere have been multiple successful trials of shorter work weeks that led to happier employees without a loss of productivity.  The comments on this article are as interesting as the article itself, ranging from those who'd work no other way to business owners who say they can't make it work.   

One interesting finding in our research is that despite their legislated 35-hour work week,  42 percent of French respondents said they'd take a 20% pay cut in return for a 4-day work week.  

What can organizations do to achieve their productivity goals without burning out employees?

Managers are the first line of defense when it comes to 1) ensuring employees are clear on their priorities and 2) monitoring whether they are reaching a point of burnout.  Our respondents indicated that they are putting more pressure on themselves than they are experiencing from their managers.

Leaders and managers need to remove obstacles to productivity where they can.  Our respondents say they spend a significant amount of time doing work that doesn't contribute to meeting their objectives.  Prior research we conducted revealed that organizations may undermine their employees' productivity through outdated attitudes and policies. It's not unusual for systems and processes to outlive their usefulness in any workplace.  It's important to revisit how work is getting done on a regular basis and challenge whether there is a better way.

It's obvious not all employees are the same when it comes to their needs for work life balance and those needs can change over time.  For managers willing to explore creative solutions that will work for their team, there are longstanding, practices out there to help workers achieve the balance they need such as compressed work weeks, job sharing, self-scheduling, etc.

 

 

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