Four-Day Workweek Not All It’s Cracked Up To Be?
Despite the four-day workweek sounding ideal to many, employers could have trouble adapting and leveraging new avenues and strategies to help prevent employee burnout.
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Though many of us operate under the five-day, 9-to-5 model, there’s been talk for quite some time about reducing this schedule. In other parts of the world, employers consider work-life balance in an effort to decrease stress and fulfill people’s social and recreational needs. If a four-day workweek was implemented in the US, there are various pros as well as cons that should be acknowledged.
The pandemic ushered in new conversations about workplace dynamics and the ability to work remotely. When lockdown began, many people who had previously operated in office spaces started working from their homes and apartments, which proved relatively successful. This transformed how employees and employers understood efficient work, finding out throughout the pandemic that people could make at-home work doable.
Now, bosses worldwide are discussing hybrid schedules with their employees, attempting to create better plans for work-life balance. This has also catalyzed the latest conversations around four-day workweeks and whether they’re manageable models. Though a reduced schedule could work for people, specific issues must be addressed before this structure can be appropriately utilized.
One problem people might have with a four-day workweek is workload consistency. Though chopping off an extra day from working sounds ideal, an employer might not reduce the number of tasks one has to complete, thus making the employee scramble to complete everything in a shorter timeframe. This could lead to longer days for workers, which might not be beneficial or conducive to someone’s work-life balance in the long run.
But, even if the four-day workweek sounds foreign or unrealistic to some, changing the standard work schedule is nothing new for Americans. The five-day week was first initiated in 1926, not even 100 years ago, by the Ford Motor Company. This change came from organized protests by workers‘ unions who were fed up with the unethical six-day workweek, where employees only had Sundays off.
Today, the five-day schedule is incredibly common and has helped employees feel more motivated to complete their tasks efficiently, but even five days can be strenuous. Since the 1950s, labor unions have advocated for shorter workweeks and improved conditions, but these requests haven’t gained massive traction in America. As of 2020, a study surveying 10,000 full-time employees in the United States indicated that merely 5% operated under a reduced workweek.
Four-day workweeks have picked up as a popular discussion topic since the start of the pandemic. Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, program director at the non-profit organization 4 Day Week Global, stated that the reduced work schedule’s popularity has skyrocketed since COVID lockdowns were implemented. Pang referred to the Great Resignation, an ongoing trend that began in 2021 when Americans voluntarily quit their positions in unprecedented waves, as a catalyst for people reimagining their work-life dynamic.
One of the main issues with implementing a reduced work schedule is communication. Employers will have to be more diligent about assigning tasks and due dates to their subordinates instead of initiating a plan on Monday and waiting until the end of the week to assign its deadline. It’ll take utilizing new operating practices and technologies to provide manageable four-day workweeks without overstretching the employees.
