The five-day work week has been American regulation for 80 years, however most Individuals wish to swap to a four-day work week, in keeping with a brand new Bentley-Gallup Enterprise in Society Report.
Seventy-seven % of American staff surveyed say a four-day, 40-hour work week would have an especially or considerably optimistic impact on their well-being. Staff additionally mentioned they need their firms to supply psychological well being days (74%) and restrict the work they’re anticipated to do exterior of labor hours (73%).
Some firms, together with Amazon, Basecamp, Microsoft and Panasonic, supply four-day workweek choices, however most companies persist with the tried-and-true five-day mannequin. Why? Consultants say it is a mixture of decrease productiveness (though research present this isn’t the case), staffing issues, elevated prices and complicated adjustments in operations.
Past that, there’s simply normal resistance to vary.
“It has been nearly 100 years since we labored with the present work week,” Juliet Schor, an economist and sociologist at Boston School who has researched the four-day work week, advised the Washington Publish. “I do not suppose we will anticipate that [to change] over evening.”
A quick historical past of the five-day work week
Responding to union stress, Henry Ford was one of many first employers to standardize the five-day, 40-hour work week in 1926. Ford additionally noticed that minimizing working hours would result in a affluent center class, the spine of his manufacturing unit staff. Within the early days of the Industrial Revolution, Individuals labored like canines, averaging 100 hours every week, six days every week—one thing needed to change. In 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt handed the Honest Labor Requirements Act, which made the 40-hour work week the regulation of the land.
How the 4-day work week works
However in recent times, many firms have adopted the four-day work week, wherein workers are allowed to work 10-hour days, 4 days every week, as a substitute of eight hours, 5 days every week. The pay stays the identical, however the schedule adjustments, permitting staff to take pleasure in an additional break day every week.
4-day work weeks are common amongst millennials and Gen Z, who place a excessive worth on work-life stability. The truth is, 92% of younger adults say they’d work longer hours in alternate for a four-day work week, in keeping with a Bankrate survey.
Final 12 months, greater than 33 firms within the UK trialled 4 days every week over six months. After that, most firms mentioned they’d not return to the five-day work week, citing elevated productiveness and worker satisfaction.
Adoption is gradual
Regardless of the keenness many workers have for the four-day work week, their employers usually are not so nervous. Solely 15 % of American staff say their firms supply four-day weeks, in keeping with ADP’s 2023 survey.
Change is tough, particularly in a risky financial system the place companies are risk-averse. However trade analysts say that in the end, the extra staff demand four-day work weeks, the extra their bosses will bend to their will. It is all a matter of provide and demand, one thing that firms know all about.
“As soon as some firms begin providing [four-day workweeks] and when plenty of staff begin making use of for these positions … it might truly put extra stress on firms to introduce this non-traditional profit,” Bankrate analyst Sarah Foster advised CNBC.