We're advancing towards a 4-day week - from above (government prototypes) and below (individuals and companies)

There’s many arguments for a shorter working-week (4 to 3 days) with no loss of pay - zero-carbon, mental health and wellbeing, more active citizens, even workplace productivity - and it looks like the momentum is really building.

Some of the momentum is 3 steps forward, 2 back. For example Belgium has just passed a raft of labour market laws, one of which includes the right to work your existing 40 hour-week in 4 ten-hour days. How exhausted will you be, working 8am-6pm - as well as how disrupted will your home and child-care life be? Getting more recovery time from a more intense grind doesn’t seem like much of an advance (as opposed to pushing back the boundaries of work to release more wellbeing).

Other places get it. The Welsh government’s Future Generations commissioner (who is always good news) brought out a report last week, urging a trial for the four-day week in the Welsh public sector. There’s a lot of public buy-in:

  • 76% of the Welsh public would support the sharing out of work so that everyone can have good work-life balance.

  • 57% of the Welsh public would support the Welsh Government piloting a scheme to move towards a four-day working week.

  • 62% of the Welsh public would ideally choose to work a four day working week or less.

And the report (main page here) itself argues (says the BBC) that “by cutting hours but not pay absenteeism would fall and productivity increase, and a healthier population would then put less pressure on the NHS. ‘The alternative is to keep working as normal, increase mental health (sickness) rates, increasing the cost of living crisis and not preparing for the changing nature of work’”, said the commissioner, Sophie Howe.

It’s worth noting the various pushbacks to this. The Telegraph entertaingly calls them “Soviet” style measures - but makes something of the same point as (surprisingly) economist Robert Skidelsky in The Mail, which is that in a post-covid economic recovery moment, now is not the time to limit people’s access to economic opportunities.

But these reports might well underestimate the impact that Covid’s lockdowns and quarantines have had, unravelling our previous norms of a meaningful and effective working life. The Telegraph piece states the Establishment anxiety baldly at the end:

If the pendulum swings too far in the opposite direction, then the danger is that soon it isn't just working in the office, or working a full week that people object to, but the very concept of work itself. We should be careful what we wish for.

Going by phenomena like the Great Resignation in the UK and US, workers seem to be voting with their feet in search for more fulfilling work. And although the FT is ambivalent in this editorial, surely the idea of a shorter working week will become an attractor to companies in the labour market.

We’re always alive to initiatives that aren’t just passively waiting on progressive legislation to descend from on high - and which try to foment change from below or the middle. So we were really happy to hear about Enrol Yourself (who we often celebrate here) and their new course titled The League of Less Work.

It’s a learning journey that aims at reducing the hours worked in a company (for the same pay) to 90% - Enrol Yourself will commit their organisation to that target. But Enrol Yourself wants to do so through cross-company groups, who will each other with mutual support and ideas-sharing about how to make it happen, taking place over 9 months.

See this blog from Enrol Yourself’s chief exec Zahra Davidson, who takes you through the steps she’s following to make that reduction. The League of Less Work is supported by the 4-Day Week Campaign.