Post by account_disabled on Mar 4, 2024 22:16:31 GMT -5
Maybe a fantasy is coming true: a four-day work week. Unilever, the huge corporation that owns brands such as Dove and Ben and Jerry's, is trialling a shorter work week with employees in New Zealand who will be paid for five days while working four.
While Microsoft ran a similar pilot in Japan in 2019, giving employees Fridays off, and saw productivity grow by 40% even though workers spent less time in the office. Now, the Spanish government is considering a proposal that would incentivize companies across the country to reduce working hours without a pay cut.
" Now that we have to rebuild our economy, Spain has the perfect opportunity to go for the four-day or 32-hour week ," Íñigo Errejón, a politician from the Spanish Más País party, told the Independent. The Más País party wants the government to carry out a pilot that grants subsidies to companies that test the idea.
It is a policy for the future that allows us to Chile Mobile Number List increase worker productivity, improve physical and mental health, and reduce our impact on the environment.
We must lead Europe as we did 100 years ago with the move to an eight-hour working day.
Politician of the Spanish Más País party.
The situation in Spain
In Barcelona, a regional budget project has a similar proposal.
Globally, companies that have pioneered the concept have seen that it can work without subsidies. As with Microsoft, companies have seen productivity actually increase with fewer hours, while job satisfaction skyrockets.
But in the current economic crisis, subsidies could help push companies to make the switch. Spain's proposal is partly inspired by a German concept, Kurzarbeit, which allowed employers to reduce hours during the global financial crisis, while the government helped cover a portion of lost wages.
Workers could use the fifth day of the week to learn skills for a new job. The subsidy model " makes sense in certain contexts ," says Andrew Barnes, who helped launch a successful four-day-a-week program at New Zealand company Perpetual Guardian in 2018, and who is now consulting with other companies and governments considering the change through an organization called 4 Day Week.
A program like the one Spain is considering could also help lead to more permanent change.
We would argue very clearly that moving to a four-day-week model based on productivity will result in improved productivity.
I think the Kurzarbeit model is something you can use as a springboard. You could use it to say, we're going to reduce the work week to four days. But if we then get that improvement in productivity as a consequence, then really, as economic conditions improve, we could keep our staff on four days and go back to paying them five days' wages.
Andrew Barnes.
During the pandemic, Barnes says he has seen interest in the four-day-week model grow.
One of the impediments to working a four-day week was understanding productivity. People use being in the office as a substitute for productivity. If you work five eight-hour days, I get 40 hours of productivity. Now, of course, that's not true.
What the pandemic did is it sent everyone home, and you have to find an alternative method of measuring productivity. Many companies did that. And then they discovered that people were just as productive even if they weren't there. That meant they did two things: they gained an appreciation of productivity and they gained a level of trust, meaning that they could actually trust people to do their jobs, even if they were unsupervised.
Andrew Barnes.
Now, he says, many more companies and governments are starting to consider the idea: "It has made many companies start to rethink how they are going to work. They know they are not going to go back to what we had before. So what they're trying to do is say, well, let's think about some of the things. Progressively, you're starting to see some large companies make the switch to a four-day week. And I think that will accelerate as we move forward ,” Barnes says.
While Microsoft ran a similar pilot in Japan in 2019, giving employees Fridays off, and saw productivity grow by 40% even though workers spent less time in the office. Now, the Spanish government is considering a proposal that would incentivize companies across the country to reduce working hours without a pay cut.
" Now that we have to rebuild our economy, Spain has the perfect opportunity to go for the four-day or 32-hour week ," Íñigo Errejón, a politician from the Spanish Más País party, told the Independent. The Más País party wants the government to carry out a pilot that grants subsidies to companies that test the idea.
It is a policy for the future that allows us to Chile Mobile Number List increase worker productivity, improve physical and mental health, and reduce our impact on the environment.
We must lead Europe as we did 100 years ago with the move to an eight-hour working day.
Politician of the Spanish Más País party.
The situation in Spain
In Barcelona, a regional budget project has a similar proposal.
Globally, companies that have pioneered the concept have seen that it can work without subsidies. As with Microsoft, companies have seen productivity actually increase with fewer hours, while job satisfaction skyrockets.
But in the current economic crisis, subsidies could help push companies to make the switch. Spain's proposal is partly inspired by a German concept, Kurzarbeit, which allowed employers to reduce hours during the global financial crisis, while the government helped cover a portion of lost wages.
Workers could use the fifth day of the week to learn skills for a new job. The subsidy model " makes sense in certain contexts ," says Andrew Barnes, who helped launch a successful four-day-a-week program at New Zealand company Perpetual Guardian in 2018, and who is now consulting with other companies and governments considering the change through an organization called 4 Day Week.
A program like the one Spain is considering could also help lead to more permanent change.
We would argue very clearly that moving to a four-day-week model based on productivity will result in improved productivity.
I think the Kurzarbeit model is something you can use as a springboard. You could use it to say, we're going to reduce the work week to four days. But if we then get that improvement in productivity as a consequence, then really, as economic conditions improve, we could keep our staff on four days and go back to paying them five days' wages.
Andrew Barnes.
During the pandemic, Barnes says he has seen interest in the four-day-week model grow.
One of the impediments to working a four-day week was understanding productivity. People use being in the office as a substitute for productivity. If you work five eight-hour days, I get 40 hours of productivity. Now, of course, that's not true.
What the pandemic did is it sent everyone home, and you have to find an alternative method of measuring productivity. Many companies did that. And then they discovered that people were just as productive even if they weren't there. That meant they did two things: they gained an appreciation of productivity and they gained a level of trust, meaning that they could actually trust people to do their jobs, even if they were unsupervised.
Andrew Barnes.
Now, he says, many more companies and governments are starting to consider the idea: "It has made many companies start to rethink how they are going to work. They know they are not going to go back to what we had before. So what they're trying to do is say, well, let's think about some of the things. Progressively, you're starting to see some large companies make the switch to a four-day week. And I think that will accelerate as we move forward ,” Barnes says.