The five-day working week is deeply ingrained in western culture. A Monday-to-Friday 9-to-5 schedule is practically unspoken law across the UK, with just two days to unwind and take care of physical and mental wellbeing at the weekend.

However, with the compounded stress of the coronavirus pandemic, and the unmitigated success of the almost universal uptake of remote working – which goes against another deeply-ingrained culture of office-based presence – does the five-day working week really work?

The British population seems to disagree; a YouGov survey, which was conducted before the pandemic took hold, found that 63% of workers would back a move to a four-day working week. An additional study from the CIPD noted that 60% of UK employees currently work longer hours than they see as fair, with 24% over-working by up to ten-hours a week.

This is in stark contrast to 78% of employees who work on more flexible schedules and believe that it has had a positive impact on their lives.

And whilst various employers have trialled a standardised four-day week, very few have stuck with it, which makes the news that multinational consumer goods giant Unilever is currently poised to trial the concept across its New Zealand operations all the more surprising.

The company announced, as reported in The Guardian, that all 81 of its employees across the nation would be able to participate in the new trial from next week and will have the option of working four days per week for the next 12 months. All staff will be paid their current salary, with no forfeit for the reduction in hours.

Unilever’s NZ Managing Director, Nick Bangs, said that the aim of the change was to optimise the time that staff spent at work, not to increase the working hours on the four-days that staff will spend working.

“If we end up in a situation where the team is working four extended days then we miss the point of this,” he said. “We don’t want our team to have really long days, but to bring material change in the way they work.”

The trial will act as a case study for Unilever’s global business, and Bangs noted that if it is deemed a success, it may well be rolled out across the company’s 155,000 employees across the world.

“It’s very much an experiment. We have made no commitments beyond 12 months and beyond New Zealand. But we think there will be some good learning we can gather in this time,” he said.

If the trial is deemed a success and Unilever does choose to roll out the four-day working week across its global business, it will be the largest company to have done so to date – marking a massive progression for the concept.

How would you feel about a 4-day working week?  Don’t forget, this is NOT for reduced pay either!  We welcome your comments.  Do you feel it would make you more productive on those days knowing that you had an extra day to wind down and do your own things?

As an employer, how could this impact or benefit your business?

 

Kieran Howells

Executive Grapevine Jan 2021