For many sectors a four day working week might be impractical, unworkable, or even dangerous. But these may well be outliers and edge cases.
Might most businesses be able to make the shift without changing salary?
After all, the five day work week has been around for approximately 100 years. Has the last century of technological innovation, infrastructure enhancement, and social change not improved average worker output at all? Surely we’ve gotten 20% better on average across all that time?
To many East Anglian businesses and organisations, this seems like idealistic abstraction and pie-in-the-sky reasoning. Yet the truth is that even from a hard nosed economic point of view, there are good reasons why businesses across the region should take this seriously. The idea of a four day working week is radical, but it offers real benefits. The kind that businesses, governments, and social organisations might want to get more active in arguing for. Here’s four very compelling cases.
First – convenience
There is a famous post that has made its way round the internet several times, that goes like this:
“I work 9-5 in an office. Your shop is open from 9-5. I will never be able to go to your shop. Why did we design our society like this?”
An extremely reasonable question.
Obviously not all shops work like this any more. Supermarkets tend to open longer, and many major shopping centres open themselves up late into the night one day a week. But broadly speaking many high streets in the UK operate on this principle. Around 9-5 for most of the week, when huge numbers of potential consumers are stuck in their offices.
For the sake of both the high street’s income and the consumer’s convenience, might it make more sense to free up one additional day of the week? Not a single specific day too, give people the option to go in the middle of the week, the start, or even the end. More consumer spending is better for the economy overall. This could be a very easy way to encourage this, with lots of other benefits as well.
Second – performance
Study after trial after test after experimental preliminary period all show the same thing. Limiting the working week to four days results in an improvement in overall worker performance.
The most recent study of this nature came from the Scottish insolvency service “Accountant in Bankruptcy” and the development agency “South of Scotland Enterprise”. They found that after switching to a 32 hour week with no reduction in pay, 98% of staff reported improvements in morale and motivation.
There was also a 25.7% reduction in staff absenteeism for psychological and mental health related reasons.
Other metrics around the world have shown the same thing. When Microsoft Japan tried this in 2019 they saw a 40% jump in sales per employee.
In Wales, Barcud Shared Services saw overall productivity rise 15% when they moved to a four day work week.
A UK wide national trial from 2022 found companies experienced an average revenue increase of 1.4%, but some companies went as high as 35%.
The evidence seems to suggest that at this point easing up on people’s working time may actually improve the overall results day to day. The mood seems to be moving to quality of work over quantity of hours.
Third – retention
Hiring is a lengthy and expensive process for any business to go through. Advertising a role. Filtering CVs. Interviewing potential candidates.
Analysis are many and varied, but the average costing is somewhere between £3,000-£6,000 to hire a single employee. That’s an average. When considering seniority levels, that number can go much higher. Up to £10,000.
With these kinds of costs, any move that can improve employer retention and keep people working at your company and growing their career in a single space is more than worthy of consideration.
A six month long study done by Cambridge University, University of Salford, and Boston College in 2022 recorded a 57% fall in staff departures when following a four day working week.
South Cambridgeshire district council saw something similar, with a 40% drop in staff turnover when they moved over to this model.
Retaining staff could save businesses huge amounts of money. Cutting out one day of work might well be more than worthwhile.
Fourth – society
If you give people more time, what might they do with it?
Sure, some significant percentage might just sit around and rest in an ‘unproductive’ way. But many more will use the time to make meaningful and impactful contributions to their communities, their families, and society at large.
With a whole extra day for the average person to play with, what kinds of benefits could volunteer-based organisations expect to see. What kinds of new experiences might parents get to share with their children? What kinds of opportunities to develop skills and test out talents might people have? How much healthier might people be with more time to exercise?
All these changes could help improve society at large. With people feeling less stressed in general, and more able to pursue their own passions and improvements, the wider world could well breathe out a long held sigh of relief. Many different mental health problems and stress related conditions could well see reductions if more people had more control over their time.
The region as a whole could well benefit if this move was made more widely. Maybe its time for more businesses in East Anglia to take a hard nosed look at the four day week.
