The case for the four-day work week

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Jordan Heath-Rawlings The five day work week is better than the six day work week, that’s for sure. But since the five day work week was introduced, it’s been stuck at five, and I’m just gonna ask on this nice Spring, Friday. Why, why not four days? This isn’t just me wanting another day off and wanting you to have one too. This is a data backed way to make you more productive for your employer, more relaxed in your home life, and require less time off from work to do the little things like get your passport renewed or your teeth. It would be one thing if I was to point at a single pilot project and say, this one study here proves this crazy idea just might work. It is a different thing all together to say, see here are multiple studies and multiple pilot projects, and here are companies who have actually done this and seen results, and this is how good it’s been for them. And there is all this evidence and we get more evidence every month, and it’s massively popular in just about every single poll. So why aren’t we doing this? So once. With feeling. Say it with me. Why am I working today? Why are you, why can’t we have a four day work week? I am Jordan Heath-Rawlings. This is the big story. Jared Lindzon is a freelance journalist who writes about the future of work and technology among many other things, and he examined the four Day Work Week in the Globe and Mail. Hello, Jared. I wanna start with this before we get into four day work weeks. Why do we have a five day work week anyway? Where did this come from? It wasn’t always this way.

Jared Lindzon It wasn’t always this way. Um, it, it came from, uh, a lot of activity around the time of, uh, industrialization when a lot of. Things became formalized in a way that they hadn’t had to be prior to, uh, you know, before we worked in factories, life was very different. Work was very different around the turn of the century, a lot of the rules and conventions that we know as standard today were established, including the five day work week. Originally, it was a six day work week, Sunday being the Lord’s Day, of course. And then in 1908, the first known American factory switched to a five day work week to accommodate its Jewish workers who were observing the Sabbath and not working on Saturdays, but were working on Sundays instead. Now that system works for a while. But then their Christian colleagues got offended that the Jews were working on the Lord’s Day on Sunday. So they just went with a a five day work week. But really it was cemented later on by Henry Ford who wanted to make sure that his staff could not only afford the products that they were building, but actually had time to enjoy them and thus drive up the automobile market in the United.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings And a bunch of this was as a result, uh, of union victories, right?

Jared Lindzon Absolutely. Yeah. There’s a lot of fighting going on in, in sort of the, the tens, twenties and thirties that, uh, ended up with a lot of the standards that, that we know today. And one of the things that was fought for and, and was eventually passed in the United States in the thirties was the idea of overtime pay. And once overtime pay began at the 41st hour, suddenly every employer was shortening the work week to 40 hours to make sure that they didn’t surpass that threshold. So that’s almost a hundred years ago. Yes. Um, it’s been working reasonably well, uh, well enough that we haven’t had any massive union movements or massive corporate attempts to claw it back.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Why would we rethink it today?

Jared Lindzon Well, I think you know the answer’s in the question. So much has changed in the last a hundred years. I think everything is, is up for debate and primed to be questioned, uh, within the modern context. You know, so much of how we work is so different that I think some of these rules and conventions are, are ripe for, for reconsideration. There’s a lot of things obviously that are different today than they were a hundred years ago. One of the biggest difference is that our output is more often associated with, you know, brain power rather than physical labor, which was not the case. And you know, the brain needs rest. The brain needs time off. The brain does better when it is not as stressed and not as occupied or preoccupied. Non-work related things. So, um, a lot of the arguments for the four day work week suggest that it might actually improve productivity, which a lot of people think it doesn’t make any sense.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings How could shortening the work week improve productivity?

Jared Lindzon The reality is that if we’re so dependent on brain power for the output today, then having a stronger, you know, more relaxed, uh, less distracted brain actually improves. So where did the concept of moving to a four day work week initially come from and how long has it been around? Uh, the four day work week has been sort of discussed a lot, but I haven’t really seen it taken so seriously until the last few years. You know, as, as long as I’ve been doing this, I’ve been writing about work for about 10 years. And there was always a little bit of a conversation in the background about the four day work week. There was also the same conversation happening about remote work, but as we know, it didn’t really take off until the pandemic, the four day work week is, is kind of the same, you know, I feel like it’s been. Sort of bubbling beneath the surface. There’s been people who have tried it and said it works, and people who have studied it and say it works, but others who say it’s, you know, just not practical or why would we change, you know, if it ain’t broke, why do we fix it? I think all of a sudden in the last few years we’ve noticed a lot more things that are broken and, and perhaps right, for fixing.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings So where has it been tried?

Jared Lindzon You know, you mentioned a couple of studies, um, I know there’ve been some pilot projects. Uh, where has it been tried and, and where in Canada. Yeah, I mean, it’s been tried all over the world. You know, there’s a few corners that you can point to now where there hasn’t been some big experiments. Uh, one of the most interesting ones for me was during the pandemic, uh, New Zealand really locked down their borders, and there’s such a. Tourist heavy economy that they switched to a four day work week or, or encouraged a four day work week so that the locals could take part in more of the tourist activities as that industry was suffering during the pandemic, which I thought was interesting. And then, yeah, I started looking at, uh, a few different companies, everything from tech companies to uh, there was a municipality. The government of Nova Scotia, uh, gave us a try in the summer of 2020, and it went very well for them those days. You know, there’s a, a growing list of companies that are doing it. I wouldn’t say we’re at the point where we could say, you know, there’s a, a sizable percentage of the country that’s, that’s even looking at this seriously. Like, you know, it would be in the low single digits, but if you want to count individual c. There’s definitely a good number across a very broad range of industries in Canada that are, you know, giving it a shot and taking it seriously.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Is there any consensus, um, emerging from all these attempts, pilot projects, different companies doing it? And I, I don’t necessarily mean a this is great or this won’t work consensus, but are there things that we can say we’ve learned, uh, from where it’s been attempted?

Jared Lindzon There’s a few things that we know. We know that overall most companies report that productivity is either the same. Or greater from reducing the work week. We know that definitely employee satisfaction and engagement scores go through the roof fair for any company that tries that. And in this current labor environment, you know, the big one for most employers is that retention and recruitment also go through the roof, and that’s an important piece of this conversation that we need to discuss, because I think if we were in a different labor market, we might not be talking right now about the reality of, of a four day work week. Uh, you know, but now employees are, are firmly in control. And so the conversation is how do we, you know, improve attraction and retention. And then there’s a lot of other smaller benefits that are worth bringing up, you know, less employee absences, which tends to add up over time. You don’t need to take as many sick days or, you know, uh, three o’clock to go to a dentist appointment if you have an extra weekday to do those sorts of things. Um, so there’s, there’s a lot of different improvements overall. The companies that have tried this generally report that, yeah, productivity stays the same or improves. And the vast majority of the most recent pilots, nine out of 10, say that they will continue doing this on an ongoing basis.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Where has the resistance to this or the downside of this made itself seen? You know, you kind of mentioned earlier when we were talking about the five day work week, you know, why would we change it? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Is that resistance mostly just, you know, inertia? Or are there things that employers are worried about related to this?

Jared Lindzon I mean, I, I’ve considered a lot of the counter-argument. A lot of them are based on inertia in one way or another. You know, once you really dig down into like, why do you really feel strongly that this can’t work? A lot of it is the, the inertia of this is the way it’s always been done and you know, how much more can we give our employees? We’ve already given them flexibility in terms of location. We’ve already upped salaries this year. Like what more do we need to throw at them? A lot of companies are not quite accustomed to. Dynamic change that we’ve been talking about where, you know, the, the candidate pool and the employee base is firmly in control of the labor market. So it seems like there’s a lot of just negative feelings around that change in dynamic. That’s where a lot of the inertia is, but it’s also important to note that. You know, like remote work. The, the companies that prepare for this appropriately and that really put in work at the outset are gonna have much better results. You know, and, and I know during the pandemic we didn’t really have a choice. A lot of companies just switched to remote work, lift and shift what they were doing in the office to a virtual environment. There were so many things that didn’t work about that, and they rushed back into the office as soon as possible. There’s a lot of other companies that really took the time to study, you know, how do. Optimize for a remote first workforce and in the end, remote work worked a lot better than in person. And those are the companies that are probably still remote or hybrid. Um, the same is true of the four day work week. If you just go into it without making any preparations, without any considerations, it’s probably gonna be a failure.Um, if you spend a little bit of time at the outset figuring out systems and processes that are optimized for this structure, you’re gonna end up having a lot more success.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Let’s talk about some practical examples though. Can you, can you give me some picture of what preparing and optimizing and getting ready? I mean, listen, I know we’re talking about business stuff here, so buzzwords are, uh, are important. But like, can we talk about what a company might do to make this work?

Jared Lindzon Yeah, let’s talk about synergies and uh, you know, other, uh, yeah. Corporate buzzword. I’m gonna circle back on that later. . Yeah, exactly. Um, so I. The reality is that not every employee, this is perhaps gonna come as a surprise. Not every employee is productive for eight hours a day, for five days a week. I know it’s a shock. I just try to be productive for about half an hour a day. So, right. There’s, there’s a lot of theories that is sort of like you, you filled the space that you’re given for on a project or an assignments, and so if you are given. You know, five days you’ll get it done in five days. If you are given four days, you’ll find a way to get it done in four days. So there, there are ways to sort of find those efficiencies. It also really depends on the company and the industry. Sorry. I will say that businesses that currently don’t operate on a five day, uh, you know, Monday to Friday, nine to five schedule are gonna have more of a challenge than those that do, you know, if you’re already accustomed to shift work in different hours. Then this might not be the right kind of transition, but most companies that are, you know, nine to five, Monday to Friday, are able to find enough efficiency to start narrowing down the day and to, you know, encourage their people to work a little bit harder with that extra incentive daily in front of them. A lot of businesses in, in Canada, Already do the, the summer Friday thing and no one really questions, you know, where are you finding that, that Friday off for half the summer or you know, the half day for the whole summer, whatever it may be? It’s, it’s the same thing. You know, if you wanna make it work, there’s not a lot that you have to do to make it work. It’s just, you know, some businesses, for example, I spoke with a law firm, they wanted to keep their business staffed five days. But, and their employees are only responsible for four of those days. So what happens if someone’s trying to reach one of their lawyers on the fifth day that they’re off? They need to have a system in place for directing that inquiry to someone who is available. So switching from an individual email system to more of a teams based, you know, this email is filtered through three different colleagues, and one of them is always working so that they can respond in a timely manner. Those sorts of systems really go a long. So far when we’ve talked about, uh, the length of the work week, we haven’t talked about hours.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Is this something that would typically change? Would we be working, uh, for 10 hour shifts essentially? Uh, or are we talking about actually eliminating some hours of work?

Jared Lindzon Yeah, that’s, that’s the ongoing debate in this area and you, you’ll hear a lot of it once we start digging into it. There’s definitely a split going on and, and I think. Also a lot of employers find it more palatable to start with four, 10 hour days, just easier to stomach for them. . Yeah, exactly. Like the, it’s, it’s hard to imagine how are we gonna cut eight hours off of our week and still, you know, hit all of our targets and, and maintain all of our, our business goals. And so for them it feels a lot easier to switch to four 10 hour days. And a lot of businesses have had. With four 10 hour days. I gotta imagine those days drag on pretty hard, especially, you know, in the winter where it’s, it gets dark out and you’re still working for three more hours. Like that can’t feel like fun. But I will also say that a lot of companies that start with the four 10 hour days end up switching down to four, eight hour days. And, and if you talk to the purists, if you talk to the, the real advocates in this space, they’ll tell you that the ideal situ. Is four days, eight hours a day, full pay as if they were working five. And I mean, how much of this is also while we’re talking about like the knowledge economy work, how much of this is also just like people now work unpaid overtime all the time, or check their email at APM or you know, answer a reply at 7:00 AM before they have to be at work.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Like this work is getting done somehow, regardless.

Jared Lindzon Yeah, exactly. You know, it, it’s. A hundred years ago when these rules were created, work had a very specific time and place and wasn’t very, um, port. Let’s say that is definitely no longer the case. And you know, even some folks who, who do work a, a four day work week are still checking email on the fifth day, you know, maybe even o on the weekends and, and evenings as well. And I think a lot of us have the experience of, you know, not being able to fully switch off, which is one of the arguments in favor of the four day work week. It’s that, you know, things don’t fall through the cracks as easily anymore. Given that. Always have access, and if there is any kind of emergency that needs our immediate attention, you know, we can be reached even if we’re not in the office.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings You’ve kind of touched on this, uh, in a couple of your answers around different kinds of work, but should this, you know, gather steam, hit a tipping point, become the norm, who loses out?

Jared Lindzon This is a big shift. Not everybody will make it. And is that, People talk about the four day work week, I think in the same terms that they talk about remote work. A lot of the times it seems very binary. You know, when I was writing about remote work during the pandemic, especially in the early days, people would say, well, are we just gonna always work remotely for what’s gonna happen to offices? What about downtowns? You know, the whole world is gonna collapse because everybody is going to work remotely all the time. And you know, the message I’m trying to send is, This isn’t the end of a certain way of working in the beginning of a new way of working, which is the easiest way to conceptualize it, but it’s the end of a one standard for every kind of employee, every kind of industry, and every kind of worker. Remote work doesn’t work for every single human being that is employed. In this country, uh, you know, or on this planet. And people seem to, to look at it as we’re all going to work remotely, we’re all gonna work hybrid, or we’re all going back into the office. And the reality, as we’ve seen is that organizations have the opportunity to pick and choose what works best for them. And I think it’s important to look at the four day work week in the same context. This, this won’t work for everybody. It’s gonna work for a lot more people than. Think and a lot more industries than, than you might think at the outset. You know, I spoke to a law firm who sells hours as they put it, and, and it worked very well for them. But there’s still gonna be a lot of organizations, and especially like I said, those that, uh, are currently dependent on shift work, that are very manual, very in person. It’s not gonna be as easy to make this transition. It might not be doable. And, and that’s okay as well. I, I don’t think. You know, this is the end of some people working five days. It’s just another option on the table that some organizations are gonna have success with. What do you expect to see in the next few years, Anne speaking as somebody who would love a four day work week and speaking, uh, probably to a bunch of listeners that would as well. How fast is this picking up steam?

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Where do you see it going?

Jared Lindzon Yeah, that’s, that’s a great question. So it always seems just around the corner, uh, you know, there was, there was a study that just came out, which, which inspired the article that inspired you to reach out to me. Um, so , the study was from Robert Half Canada. Found that almost 70% of senior managers expect the four day work week to be standard within the next five years. And five years is kind of a convenient time horizon because it’s not immediate. People don’t see this change happening this year or next year, but it’s. Easy to feel like it’ll happen in the, you know, sort of medium term future. The, the momentum is building. Absolutely. There’s more research being done, there’s more studies coming out. A lot of the research in the studies are pointing in the same direction, that this is just a win-win for employers and employees. It’s gonna take a long time to actually see this transition happening. I. You know, if there’s a change in the labor market, which I don’t suspect there will be immediately, but if all of a sudden the employers are back in control and there is, uh, you know, not as many jobs per worker, then this might take a step backwards. But if things continue on the way that they’re going and the research keeps coming out, the experiments keep happening, and they continue to point in the same direction, then. This is going to just keep building momentum and it’s hard to say exactly when that tipping point will happen again. I feel like the five year time horizon is kind of convenient cuz it’s, it doesn’t feel immediate, but it also feels inevitable.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings One last quick question. You know, if all the evidence points to this being a win-win, what’s the fight about? Is it about power?

Jared Lindzon That’s a good one. I, I would have to say it is, and again, it’s this, this change in dynamic. Really hard for organizations to accept because if you’ve been a business owner or a manager, uh, you know, for more than the last five years. Things went a certain way. There was a certain level of of power and control that came with being the employer and you were in the driver’s seat. You gotta dictate the rules. And you know, within industries competing for the same talent. There might be a little bit of competition if you’re really keen on having the best and brightest, but the incentives for being a top-notch employer weren’t really as dramatic. And so the emphasis wasn’t as significant. And I think. This change in dynamic, which, you know, you can talk to labor economists. It’s a lot to do with just aging population demographics, things that are so macro that no individual company can really, you know, manage that challenge alone. This, this change is happening and it’s hard for a lot of folks who have. Been accustomed to being in the driver’s seat, to suddenly take a backseat and say, what do you want as an employee? Not, here’s what I need from you as your employer. And yeah, that change in dynamic has been very difficult and slow, and I think a lot of organizations are kind of sitting back and waiting for it to go back to the way it. And again, the, the macroeconomics, the, the demographics, there’s just the makeup of this country and the number of workers available compared to the number of opportunities and job postings that there are. It’s not going back anytime soon. It’ll be fascinating to watch them wrestle with that over the coming years.

Jared Lindzon Jared, thank you so much for this. This is great.

Jared Lindzon My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Jared Lindzon writing in the Globe and Mail. That was the big story. You can find more at the big story podcast.ca. We still sadly publish Fridays at least until I am released from my five day work week. Ah, I’m just kidding. We’d still give you an episode. We’d just do an extra one in four days, just like you’d be more productive in four. You can follow us on Twitter at the big story fpn, or email us hello at the big story podcast.ca. Thanks for listening. I’m Jordan Heath Rawlings. Have a great weekend. Rest up and we’ll talk Monday.