https://mashable.com/article/microsoft-japan-4-day-work-week-trial-3-day-weekend/?europe=true
Interested to know people's thoughts around this?
We're in Financial Services and our Board are currently talking about this a lot (mostly due to the potential of increased productivity). Whilst I'd love to work 4 days a week and have much happier employees with better work/life balance, I can't help but be skeptical and wonder how you implement such a plan without impacting customers (a lot of whom make contact on Mondays and Fridays - the most logical days to drop) and just ending up more stressed on the 4 work days due to having to cram so much in due to the lost day!?
I can see how this would work well in some companies/departments, but I'm (reluctantly) yet to be sold on this as a company-wide initiative.
What other thoughts/views are there on this?
Replies
Hi Becky,
Interesting topic and one I am reviewing and considering as part of my job role as the director is considering a 4-day week.
My understanding, yet simplistic way to avoid any negative impact to the service customers receive is that the business still operates on a 5-day working week.
For an example, say you had 20 team members, 4 members would take Monday as leave working the remainder of the week. The next 4 team members would work Monday, take Tuesday as a day off and work the remaining three days, and so on.
You would need to devise a more structred schedule to ensure each employee had the same number of Friday's off - as this is the most common day and the day that would cause unrest if employees had a greater number of long-weekends.
I hope my insight, simplistic as it is helps. I will be researching further into the impact on companies and customer relations a 4-day week has, and also be looking at productivity, staff attainment/retention and sick days taken as part of the 4-day week.
Be good to hear from you, if you have any more insight.
Hi Becky
This is a really interesting discussion for me as it's something I am trying to get our people to start talking about. I can see all of the benefits in terms of the productivity and having happier (and healthier) employees but I'm still trying to workout what our Exec Team's appetite for trialling this is and also the pros and cons from the wider business. There are a few case studies out there but not many from the UK it seems.
If anyone is further down the line with implementing a four day week then I would also love to hear how it is being received and any hurdles encountered along the way!