Source: Positive News
A company in New Zealand trialled a four-day working week, without changing wages
It’s 3.37pm. You’re making your fifth coffee of the day. Time seems to be standing still. You don’t even like coffee.
If this sounds familiar, it may come as no surprise that the average employee spends just two hours and 53 minutes working during an eight-hour day, according to a 2016 study of 2,000 UK office workers.
You might also be interested in the results of a trial by Perpetual Guardian, a company in New Zealand that tested a four-day work week on its 240 employees in March and April this year.
Some 78 per cent of staff said they were able to successfully manage their work-life balance over the course of the experiment, an increase of 24 percentage points compared to beforehand. It is now set to be permanently rolled out there.
Could the incentive of an extra day off each week to catch up on life admin, spend time with friends and family, or simply do nothing, make us more productive on the days we are at work?
The concept isn’t new but is receiving fresh attention as awareness grows of the health impacts of long hours and precarious working conditions. Prof John Ashton, president of the UK Faculty of Public Health, made the case in 2014 for a shorter work week to combat physical and psychological challenges, saying: “The problem we have is a proportion of the population who are working too hard and a proportion that haven’t got jobs.”
At Perpetual Guardian, staff were contracted to work a five-day week but were ‘gifted’ a day off each week, on the condition they hit productivity targets.
Their pay remained the same. Academic researchers Dr Helen Delaney and Dr Jarrod Haar monitored staff…The post Thursday is the new Friday: is it time for a four-day working week? appeared first on FeedBox.