Is the 4-Day Work Week A Pipe Dream?
Last week, we asked 9 different people some questions. They worked different hours, were in different stages of family life/personal life, and were at different points in their career. And they all had different expectations for what a shorter work week would mean to them.
This surprised me, because…I always imagined the shortened work week to be universal. One size fits all, right? Well, no. Even the one newsworthy experiment that has been making headlines this year proves it. Let’s talk about that, shall we?
The Iceland Trial: Too Good To Be True?
Iceland’s 4-day work week trials didn’t actually mean 4 days of work…
So much for thinking that we could move to TGIT (Thank God It’s Thursday). Instead, some participating workplaces did this: work days from Monday to Thursday ended 30 minutes earlier, and participants would only work 6 hours on Friday.
It’s still pretty decent…imagine ending work at 3pm on Friday.
But why are we obsessed with working less? Where’s the hustle? Where’s the grind???
Well, a long time ago, in a workforce far far away in the USA, full-time workers worked as much as 100 hours a week. For perspective, that’s 56 hours of overtime by typical Singaporean standards (assuming we work from 9pm — 6pm, 5 days a week).
People naturally wanted more time to live their lives (keep in mind that leisure time is still a luxury in this day and age) and so over the century, laws changed, and now universally (and legally) there is somewhat of a ‘work-life balance’.
Somewhat. Sorta.
Also, work-life balance isn’t always leaving at 6, on the dot. Here’s what standard employment around the world looks like:
With so many cultural, religious and economic reasons to consider, blindly implementing a 4-day work week is a recipe for chaos. There are so many possible permutations for an additional non-working day. I even planned my outfits for some of them:
But an additional non-working day presents a different set of challenges. Fewer work days for healthcare workers? Hospitals need to hire more (which is already the case). If you’re doing fewer days and longer hours, we’ll need better child care solutions for parents at work. Designing a successful reduced work week requires a lot of coordination, and accepting that it’ll come with good and bad.
The Yay
The Iceland trial ran for almost 4 years. At first, there were only 6 workplaces that took part. But it wasn’t long until more people joined, excited by the prospect of working less.
First, let’s talk pros. The 1% of Iceland’s workforce who participated in the studies reported less stress, more work-life balance, better job satisfaction compared to the 5-day workers — all within the span of 12 months. Plus, a public survey showed little to no decline in the quality of service provided by these offices.
Shorter hours could benefit an ageing workforce too, as retirement becomes more of a non-option. An Australian study found it beneficial for older workers to work shorter hours during the week, reducing cognitive decline.
Was everything great, though?
The Nay/Maybe?
…the Reykjavik trials had a check-in with employees 12 months into the program, and everyone felt great! Yay!
But hold on. If this is successful, we’re potentially going to do it forever until we get replaced by robots. And so they did another check-in, 24 months in…and everyone still felt great.
Other modern 4-day work week trials — like the one done by Microsoft Japan — also received glowing reviews. You know that feeling you get when something feels too good to be true? I’m getting that right now.
The result of the exercise was that 86% of Iceland’s workforce now works reduced hours, and the remaining 14% can choose to opt in at any time.
But the report also provided insight into some challenges.
Some workplaces experienced an increase in overtime. In the Iceland trial, this issue was specific to social work and community care, but it’s clear that more research can be done about how shorter hours affect non-office jobs.
It’s kind of like working extra hours the day before you go on leave, because you know that you’re going to go on leave and you need to finish the work before you go on leave so that you don’t come back to a fire?
Sorry, that got a bit too real.
Interviews with managers in Reykjavik also showed that some workplaces with high workloads didn’t really benefit from the shortened hours. To quote the Google Translated report,
“Certain interviewees therefore consider a certain paradox in expecting people who have always worked under pressure to complete the tasks in less time.”
Shift Work Gets A Boost
One group that might be best suited to this change? Shift workers. It does require additional manpower planning, like this 2004 paper that looked at optimising a 4-day schedule for shift work, while ensuring that companies don’t face staffing shortages:
It’s kind of like my amateur attempt at planning work weeks based on #MondayBlues and #HumpDay, except it might actually be useful.
Alternative Solutions
Okay, so the 4-day week works if you have fewer work hours. What if we have to keep the same hours? What’s the solution then?
A 3-day work week, apparently. In an older trial with information systems employees, a 3-day/38-hour work schedule still kept its reductions in fatigue, overtime and absenteeism after 18 months. It sounds crazy, but 3 days of work and 4 days off a week does sound tempting, even if I need to clock 12-hour days.
Is This A War On Work?
The Iceland trials reduced the work week by 10%. For Singapore, that’s going from 44 hours to about 39.5. It’s not the dreaded 9am to 9pm, 6 days a week…but it’s also not 36 hours. The world is still divided on this issue, most notably with South Korea’s President-elect, who disagrees with the 52-hour week and believes that people should be allowed to work 120-hour weeks, and then “take a good rest”.
Yeah, I’ll be taking a good long rest…at my funeral. That’s 5 days without sleep, my guy.
Also, in reality, the legalised 2021 reductions to working hours in Iceland were in the range of 45–65 minutes PER WEEK. I guess with a little maths, you can arrive at 36 hours/week, but it does feel slightly underwhelming.
And somehow this still isn’t the most pressing problem that the global workforce faces, because workers are still being exploited to manufacture products at increasingly unsustainable rates. I’m incredibly privileged to be able to complain about having to work 40 hours, instead of 36.
I get it, not everyone counts down the hours until they can get away from work. If you want to hustle, so be it.
But the CEO’s goal shouldn’t be the employees’ life goal, and having the legal (and social) infrastructure in place to allow people to earn a livable wage AND live their lives seems only fair.
