Four-day workweek

The majority of companies have allowed employees to work remotely during the pandemic. Even after lockdown a lot of them are continuing this kind of work because they have noticed that people are more productive working remotely. Moreover, some companies go further. Recently, we can hear more about the four-day workweek. What does it mean? Is it a good solution for companies, employees and customers?

From time to time we can hear something about a four-day workweek, but to be honest, probably no one knows a company that works in that way. Of course, we could hear about entrepreneurs who work only 4 days and claim that it is the best way to enhance happiness, productivity and creativity. Yes, I also thought that it is easier said than done, but recently, even governments try to befriend shorter workweeks. One of them is the Icelandic government. They claim that their public sector is ripe for being a pioneer of shorter working weeks. According to the Association for Sustainable Democracy (Alda), “workers who participated in the trials worked 35–36 hours per week. Worker wellbeing dramatically increased across a range of indicators, from perceived stress and burnout to health and work-life balance. At the same time, productivity and service provision remained the same or improved across the majority of trial workplaces.”

Currently, 86% of Iceland’s working population are working fewer hours or “gaining the right to shorten their hours.” It shows us that not only is it possible in the current rushing world, but also that governments and companies are slowly changing their point of view.

I have wondered what it would look like in Poland. Currently, all our public sectors are busy every day. They have a lot of paperwork, information flow is convoluted and queues are very long permanently. I cannot imagine it if all public services would be cut to a four-day workweek. But all big changes require uncomfortable steps. We would go out of our comfort zone and adjust all things to the new reality. I believe it is manageable, and I also hope that one day we would do it. It will consume an enormous time of work, but if we really want to do something, we will do it. After all, we will benefit from our tough work as Iceland does.

The second option is a five-day workweek, but the last day is only for employees. I am going to explain what I mean. I heard about this solution from Michael Sliwinski, CEO of Nozbe. In his company, they have something like “Mighty Fridays”. They are more focused on personal development, therefore, on every Friday they don’t work normally, actually, they don’t work utterly. Everyone of them does a weekly review, then they have free time to invest in themselves. What does it mean? It means that their Boss allows them to improve their skills, try new things and cherish work-life balance. The majority of companies boast that they maintain a work-life balance in their workplaces. But how do they do it? If employees have a five-day workweek, they don’t have time to learn new things and improve their skills. Companies “assume people will learn in the meantime or after hours” as Michael Sliwinski said. Employees simply postpone learning, moreover, they don’t want to sacrifice their private time after work.

In the book “No Office” Michael wrote down a couple of ideas about what they can do on a “Mighty Friday”. Here are some examples:

• Watch an online conference you subscribed to.

• Go through a course you never had the time to do.

• Read all of the read-it-later articles you saved throughout the week.

• Catch-up on industry news.

• Set up your home office better: arrange additional furniture or re-organize your workplace.

• Clean up your computer, your hard drives, your physical files and your documents.

• Study all the latest features of the piece of software you use daily to get your work done — learn new tricks, watch video tutorials, memorize keyboard shortcuts or do anything that will make your work easier.

• Learn a new language or improve your language skills — both the human languages like English, Spanish or French… or the programming languages you use for work.

• Get a new hobby that’s not really very useful for your day-to-day work, but that brings you joy and sparks your curiosity.

• Chat with your colleagues about anything you want — just reconnect with them and talk about stuff.

They have been practising “Mighty Fridays” since 2016 and it works.

I believe that we can adjust everything, we can make the world a better place to live and work. We just cannot be a stick-in-the-mud. We should try to implement new solutions, let people think and work creatively, and be open-minded.

I hope that one day, governments, companies, entrepreneurs will make up their minds and the world will be changing, bit by bit, slowly but surely, and in a good way.