This past weekend Twitter users lamented over the end of their Thanksgiving break and pretty much all agreed they’d needed another day off before returning to work that Monday.
Workplace experts across the globe agree: the 4-day workweek is better for everyone.
CNN recently reported a 6-month pilot program successfully deployed a shortened across 33 companies and 903 workers, and participants aren’t likely to go back to “normal.” The workers’ productivity didn’t take a dip, and their pay wasn’t reduced as a result of the clipped week.
At the conclusion of the program, participating companies took a survey by 4 Day Week Global, and they all said they were leaning towards or planning on returning to their former five-day routine. Nearly 97% of the 495 employees shared they wanted to continue with a four-day week.
“The 4-day week has been transformative for our business and our people. Staff are more focused, more engaged and more dedicated, helping us hit our goals better than before,” he said in a statement as reported by CNN.
Countries like Canada, some parts of Australia, and Germany have already rolled out the shortened workweek model following conversations around work-life balance during the pandemic.
Additionally, in February, Belgian employees won the right to implement a workweek in four days instead of the usual five without loss of salary following the passing of a legislative bill on November 21.
The measure is catching on in the US as well, with states like California introducing legislation to deploy a 32-hour work per week work schedule.
“For some companies, failing to understand internal processes and the tasks their employees perform each day is a critical misstep that can torpedo their efforts to maintain productivity during a major workforce-related shift,” Sofia Passova, Ph.D., former rocket scientist and founder and CEO of StereoLOGIC said to Forbes in an interview. “The goal of a shortened workweek is to find ways to help employees work smarter, not harder,” Passova explained. “And the best way to do that is to identify ways to improve, streamline and maximize the value of their output through data-enabled analysis of the processes and tasks that determine their day-to-day activities.”