28th January 2022

The end of a ‘9-5’ work culture and the beginning of a four-day week – the new work Utopia or just another fad?

In a recent article, Forbes claim “Working 9 – 5 is an antiquated relic from the past and should be stopped right now”.  A strong statement, however many would claim that, in a world where consumer behaviour demands instant gratification and home working has become common place, working “9-5” has long been a thing of the past. But some organisations still cling to this comfort blanket, arguing that a good measurement of productivity is the number of hours an employee is actually in work. A shift away from the traditional 9-5 to a four day a week is a scary prospect and cannot be done where this a culture of mistrust in employee commitment.

You might ask what is wrong with the standard 9-5 working week? The research conducted over the last decade would answer that our society has changed dramatically since Henry Ford introduced the five-day, 40-hour week in 1926.  We now have factors such as longer commute times and the norm of having two working parents, which causes many employees to experience much lower work life balance than our 1920 ancestors. This has resulted in an increase of employee burn out and an increase of staff turnover, problems organisations are very keen to avoid.

For many organisations, it is a challenge to create the optimum work environment, where there is high employee satisfaction and high organisational performance. But what they do know is that these aspects are key to achieving competitive advantage in their market. Staff well-being, creating work life balance and flexibility are buzz words that won’t go away, but can organisations achieve this by shifting to a four-day week? A trial in Iceland between 2015 and 2019 saw 1% of the working population working a four-day week. The results showed an improvement in productivity and wellbeing for all employees who participated.

This same sort of trial has been seen in the UK, however the biggest catalyst for employees and organisations to rethink their options has been the pandemic.  As Forbes puts it the “pandemic induced, remote work, year and a half experiment has proven to be an undisputed success”. Many corporations such as Apple, Amazon and Google have benefited from record profits, and this would not be possible without high employee productivity, dispersing the myth that employees cannot be trusted to work at home. This ‘experiment’ also expediated workers digital capabilities, reducing the need for employees to travel to a physical workspace. This factor will work in favour of a more flexible working pattern, perhaps swaying organisations to see a four-day week as a possibility.

Whether UK businesses take the plunge into what is still quite unknown territory is still unclear. In a recent poll, nearly half of the organisations without a shorter week said they were more likely to consider it since the pandemic, however 30% said they would never consider it. CMI attribute this refusal to the age range of senior leadership teams, with younger leaders more inclined to adopt it. Perhaps this is a sign of the times, where a more educated and enlightened leadership perspective will bring about a positive change in organisational work-based practice. Only time will tell – watch this space!

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By Keri Lanyon, senior lecturer in business management, University of Wolverhampton Business School