Is A Four Day Work Week Better?

Japan, which has the world’s second largest developed economy in the world, is notorious for its low employee satisfaction, and routinely scores low in worldwide employee satisfaction rankings. A large part of this is the extremely long work week in Japan. However, there is one company that is trying to change this: Microsoft. This August, Microsoft Japan carried out a “Working Reform Project” called the Work-Life Choice Challenge Summer 2019. For one month last August, the company implemented a three-day weekend every week, giving 2,300 employees every Friday off during the month.

The results of the month long study were very promising — productivity within the company went up by a staggering 39.9%. This massive increase in productivity is mostly attributed to the change in meeting habits, with meetings being cut short, or changed into virtual sessions. At the end of the test, when employees were asked whether they preferred 4 or 5 day work weeks, 92.1% of employees said they preferred the shorter work week.

Following this massive success, came a report from economic historian Robert Skidelsky on how to achieve shorter working hours. Although the report specifically deals with British working conditions, its message is universal — to improve productivity for employers while giving employees what they want — a shorter work week.

One key takeaway from the report was:

People should have to work less for a living. Having to work less at what one needs to do, and more at what one wants to do, is good for material and spiritual well-being. Reducing working time — the time one has to work to keep ‘body and soul alive’ — is thus a valuable ethical objective.

While most arguments about a shorter work week are from an economic perspective, it is equally important to understand the ethical ramifications of a shorter work week. Skidelsky’s report also lists three main reasons for why a 4 day work week would be beneficial to employees, and their employers as well:

• With a three day weekend, people can spend more time doing what they like. People are generally happier doing what they want to, as opposed to working just to have an income.
• More free time and less work promotes happiness and well-being.
• Promoting happiness (or well-being) is ethically desirable, so it is ethically desirable to reduce the number of hours a person has to work.

Hopefully, more work can be done regarding the effects of a four day work week, and improve the working conditions of people all over the world. The experiment carried out by Microsoft Japan was a huge success, and future studies can hopefully corroborate this experiment.