Can 4-day work week help productivity jump by 40%?

Mitesh Mishra
Nov 5 · 3 min read

Microsoft Japan which experimented with a new project called Work Life Choice Challenge Summer 2019 and has received the same results!!

More on to the way Microsoft made its way back in August month giving 2300 workforce 5 Fridays off, they claim that workforce was happier and had more efficient meetings stating, “Work a short time, rest well and learn a lot,”. They also claim electricity use was down by some X% in the office.

The question is HOW? because when we even ask for a holiday the weekend working is the best alternative for client deliverable.

Well India being a consultancy hub for IT market, we as Indian can never even think beyond our client deadlines. The reason to define not to happen are many, but here we can look on the positive front that, lesser number of working days in a week indirectly will put one in a situation to bring the end solution and this as a group/team can make more shorter team meetings where everyone individually would look into the solution rather discussing on stuffs apart from the agenda for the meeting. Individuals in team which are interdependent will not be wasting time on hold period rather they would be questioning to teammates regarding the % of efforts each one is putting, indirectly it’s the team feedback by the team members themselves.

Study show that depression due to stress and less sleep is one of the major hampering elements in the efficiency of the workforce. This can be removed if we give them enough time to get fresh for the next morning/week’s target.

The flow in the organisation should become bottom up approach so there is implementation of many ideas in a less duration from a large workforce rather a single decision flow from a single management authority to a large workflow aiming to have a less real time ground experience.

This will also inculcate decision making capabilities in workforce then waiting for decision to made on hold and someone reacting on it later. Workforce individually will have lesser time in office politics and more focus on the deadlines to be answerable to clients.

Usually most of the employee lack the motivation they can bring in themselves for the role based on the deliverables so, a small target over the day can bring in change in the way employee is looking at its growth for the day by day process.

The same case study was proven experiment published in Harvard business review in 2018 on 3000 workforce.

And why not we? the same can be adapted by Indian industry on a small workforce for the matter of the fact that the entire company must be engaged with it and embrace it.

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Mitesh Mishra
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