London, (Parliament politics Magazine) – In 2020 and 2021, lockdown and work from home orders prompted many people to re-assess their work/life balance. In the US, the quest for a better quality of life promoted a wave of resignations at all levels. In the UK, employers struggled to fill vacancies, especially in roles that demanded a commitment to long hours or a long time away from home (e.g., truck drivers).
In 2021, a study found that many companies were switching to a four-day working week. A survey by the Henley Business School at Reading University found that 65 percent of the businesses surveyed had implemented a four-day working week for full-time pay.
It has become the latest way companies have to retain staff and fill vacancies. The proportion of job vacancies offering a four-day working week has risen steadily in 2021 and in the first couple of months of 2022. It could be argued that this makes official the pre-pandemic prevailing habit in many firms in the city of London to let people leave early on Friday or allow them to work from home. Staff retention aside, it is more efficient to have your staff focused on work for four days.
The same study from the Henley Business School states that a lot of the companies surveyed claimed that the four-day week saved them money, the average figure being around £18,000.
In the United Kingdom, the trend might have been started by the service industry, technology companies, or City law firms trying to attract people. Still, the idea of working four days a week is catching up in other European countries. In Belgium, the government is introducing the option to work 38 hours a week in four days rather than five. In other words, longer hours each day for fewer days in the week.
There is an apparent contradiction between the trend towards a shorter working week and a 24/7 society. We expect customer service and the ability to make reservations or shop at any time of day or night. The contradiction is only apparent because there is shift-work (a shorter working week does not mean that everybody has to work Monday-through-Thursday between 8.30 am and 6.30 pm) and labour-saving technology.
As much as we may hate having to deal with a robot rather than a human, chatbots could save time when dealing with simple questions, and automated warehouses can pack and ship our shopping with minimal human intervention.
Perhaps the most significant positive trend coming from two years of lockdown and pandemic is the quest for a better quality of life. The four-day working week is here to stay, and it will spread among to more and more roles in more and more companies.