I’ll confess that whenever the subject of a standardized four-day work week has come up, I’ve rolled my eyes. That’s for a variety of reasons, but it’s always struck me as an idea that would be very disruptive to productivity and a retreat from the work ethic that fueled the growth of the American industrial base. Still, there have been some areas where it’s been attempted, but few on as large of a scale as the United Kingdom attempted last year. 61 companies with a total of nearly 3,000 workers shifted to four-day work weeks for their workers for six months as part of a trial program developed by a coalition of nonprofit groups and universities. And now that the trial period is up, most of them have reported that it worked and most of them are going to continue to do it. But can this really last? (PBS)
A trial of a four-day workweek in Britain, billed as the world’s largest, has found that an overwhelming majority of the 61 companies that participated from June to December will keep going with the shorter hours and that most employees were less stressed and had better work-life balance.
That was all while companies reported revenue largely stayed the same during the trial period last year and even grew compared with the same six months a year earlier, according to findings released this week.
“We feel really encouraged by the results, which showed the many ways companies were turning the four-day week from a dream into a realistic policy, with multiple benefits,” said David Frayne, research associate at University of Cambridge, who helped lead the team conducting employee interviews for the trial. “We think there is a lot here that ought to motivate other companies and industries to give it a try.”
Most (not all) of the companies reported that their revenues “largely” stayed the same and that revenues were actually up from the same six-month period the year before. This should raise some questions immediately. First of all, “largely” doesn’t translate to “unaffected.” And the fact that revenues were up from the same period in 2021 shouldn’t be surprising. In the middle of 2021 we were still in the middle of the COVID madness and many workers in “non-essential industries” were either working from home or were not working.
The companies are reporting glowing reviews from the workers who almost all said they were experiencing “less burnout and stress along with greater job satisfaction.” And why wouldn’t they? They’re getting an extra day off every week. Speaking as someone who works six days a week rather than five, I’d love to have two more days off per week for the same amount of pay, but I don’t see it happening.
Speaking of which, if this had been a plan where people worked four ten-hour days instead of 5 eight-hour days, I could see how productivity and revenue might stay the same. But that’s not what happened in the UK. Workers went from working 40-hour weeks to 32-hour weeks while still being paid the same amount of money. That’s the same as suddenly getting a 20 percent raise. Who wouldn’t love that, right?
The first thing that leaps to mind for me is that if your company can produce the same amount of goods or service in 32 hours that it used to in 40 hours, you weren’t running your company very efficiently. They seem to have been forced to scramble and come up with ways to improve efficiency. But they could have done that without changing their work schedule and increased productivity by 20 percent.
I suppose my objections still boil down to a more philosophical argument. This push to shorten the work week just sounds like yet another element in the progressive push to devalue labor and productivity so more people will have time to sit in their pods and play video games while they munch on snacks made out of bugs. It’s related to the phenomenon of “quiet quitting” that we’ve heard so much about. That’s the trend of people doing the absolute minimum required at their jobs. Forget about advancement or standing out as someone who is an achiever. Just slack off and hope that you keep receiving a check every week.
This doesn’t look sustainable to me. It’s only been six months in the UK thus far. Let’s give them another year or two and check back in to see how they’re doing. Perhaps I’m wrong, but this seems like a recipe for the slow death of productivity and the general work ethic.
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