The four day work week -our new reality?

The concept of a Monday to Friday workweek has long gone unchallenged. However, the dogma of five workdays is now being questioned.

Belgium recently surprised Europe by announcing a labour reform that will reduce the workweek to just four days a week.

Employees will still work the same hours, but the hours will be reorganized and completed differently. Employees will be able to choose if they want to work just four days a week or if they prefer to work fewer hours every day but head into the office five days a week.

In Spain, the four-day working week is also set to be tested at the behest of the young Spanish politician Íñigo Errejón.

Around 6,000 employees from 200 small and medium-sized companies will have their weekends extended by one day, with full pay. The trial phase will last for a minimum of one year; however, it is still unclear when it will begin

Software Delsol is a Spanish company with 180 employees who work from Monday to Thursday. The office has a philosophy of labor flexibility that includes teleworking and aims to increase efficiency by making employees' day-to-day lives easier.

The company is an exception, though. Even internationally, it is difficult to find businesses with a four-day work week. Several have tried it: some successful, some not so successful.

In 2019, Microsoft Japan tested the four-day work week. According to CNN, the results were positive.

The company saw a 40% increase in productivity and workers seemed happier. In addition, some expenses were reduced: electricity costs fell by 23%.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has advocated the four-day work week with two objectives. The first one is to increase the welfare and productivity of the working masses.

The second objective is to give people more time to consume, travel and thus relaunch the country's economy after it was hit like so many others by the coronavirus crisis.
Has her appeal worked? In part. Some companies are implementing the new work week, but there is a lot of reluctance.

Iceland ran a trial of the four-day work week that can, in some ways, be considered a failure. In the nation's capital of Reykjavik, a group of public employees worked four days a week for a period of time.

It did not improve their productivity or result in any significant savings. However, the workers did spend less time at the office, and they were assumedly happier because of that.

In the U.S., several companies have tested the formula of four working days per week. This is the case of Shake Shack, a fast food franchise that saw its results improve during the trial.

On the other hand, there's Basecamp, a software company that had to give up after a while. According to its managers, the four-day work week made it absolutely impossible to compete with other companies that worked five days.

Sweden also tested the four-day work week with a group of public employees, particularly, with nurses. Instead of eliminating one day as a working day, it opted for 6-hour working days.

The result: worker satisfaction was great, sick leave diminished (which is an important factor), but some costs increased as as well.

Some experts say it's unrealistic to implement the four-day work week. As reported by the BBC, economist Robert Skidelsky calls the approach "inefficient."

He points to the negative precedent of the 35-hour work week in France, to which business organizations have been strongly opposed. However, those who advocate work hour reduction claim that the happiness of employees is an important value to take into account.

In addition, the four-day work week may have the economic benefit of boosting consumer spending on leisure and travel. To counter that argument, others pose the question: are current salaries high enough to cover the extra spending holiday per week?

In any case, the debate regarding this subject around the world is part of a larger effort to adapt work styles to the 21st century. Workers like the one in the image have become more and more scarce, and there are plenty of jobs nowadays that don't require physical presence or absolute dedication 24 hours a day.

Not everyone agrees on the point of shorter work weeks. Chinese tycoon Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba, believes in long hours. "Working 12 hours a day and 6 days a week is a blessing."

With various advocates and opponents of shorter work weeks and longer weekends, it remains to be seen whether such a schedule will (sooner or later) become law.

Belgium, Spain, New Zealand, and certain Scandinavian countries and American companies have already started experimenting. Who will be next?