Flexible working
Get ready for the four-day working week
Younger managers are much more open to the idea than their bosses and female leaders like it too
Pilita Clark YESTERDAY
First it was working from home. Now it is the four-day working week that is shaking business life in ways that would have seemed unthinkable before Covid-19.
At least, that is what you might think from the headlines of the past few weeks. Last Tuesday it was The Landmark London, a swish hotel in Marylebone, which said it was offering a four-day week, on higher pay, to its chefs.
The day before that, a British division of Japan’s Canon camera company said it was considering a four-day week pilot for its 140-odd staff and UK think tanks said they were recruiting companies for a six-month trial of the concept.
Less than two weeks earlier, Canon’s Japanese rival, Panasonic, revealed plans to offer its staff a four-day option to improve their work-life balance. And before that, a shorter week was being tested, planned or launched everywhere from the UK’s Atom Bank to Unilever’s New Zealand offices, Iceland, Spain and the United Arab Emirates.
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But four-day fans should hold the champagne because new UK research reveals that, as things stand, the four-day working week is a long way from being rampant.
Just 7 per cent of managers have launched it, or have decided to do so, according to Be The Business, a British non-profit group set up to foster productivity.
That is up slightly from 5 per cent in February last year, when the group last surveyed directors across the country from small and medium-sized companies, and the share who say they are thinking about it has also gone up, from 17 to 20 per cent.
Nearly half of those without a shorter week say they are more likely to consider the concept than they were before the pandemic, but almost 30 per cent say they would never consider it.
These findings chime with those from another survey of UK managers from mostly larger businesses that the Chartered Management Institute commissioned this month.
Only 6 per cent of them had a four-day week and although more than half said their organisation was actively considering the idea, or would do so, a striking 73 per cent said they thought it very unlikely it would be adopted.
Intuitively, it still seems hard to imagine how shifting to a four-day week benefits a business . . . But intuition can be flawed
That is despite the fact that large majorities thought a four-day week would boost productivity while making employees happier and easier to retain.
Yet I suspect it will not be long before the four-day week begins to canter rather than creep. Why? Because younger managers are a lot more interested in the idea than the older leaders they are on track to replace.
Nearly 80 per cent of senior managers under the age of 35 liked the thought of adopting a four-day week compared with 56 per cent of those aged 55 or older, the Chartered Management Institute data showed.
That age gap was also evident in the Be The Business research, which also showed female bosses were slightly keener on the shorter week than men: 64 per cent versus 57 per cent.
It has certainly worked well for Rachel Garrett, the 40-year-old managing director of CMG Technologies, a highly specialised metal injection moulding business in Suffolk. The company moved its 30-odd staff to a four-day week in 2015, with no cut in pay, in the hope it would keep them contented.
“For us, retaining staff and keeping staff happy is critical,” Garrett told me last week, adding turnover had increased by 25 per cent since the shorter week began, while profits had jumped 200 per cent.
She does not think the four-day week is entirely responsible for this, but believes it has had a significant influence.
Intuitively, it still seems hard to imagine how shifting to a four-day week benefits a business, despite the growing number of case studies suggesting it can. But intuition can be flawed.
The once bold idea of a weekend arose after the Industrial Revolution ushered in frenzied factory work that left workers in a state of always-on exhaustion. As British policy analyst, James Plunkett, recounts in his book, End State, progressive employers found shorter hours energised workers, whose hourly productivity and overall output rose.
Perhaps it is not so hard to imagine that workers burnt out by today’s revolution in technology might be more productive if the two-day weekend stretched to three.
Workers know they are the ones underpinning the oh so precious economy.
We had to stay at home. We did.
Now we decide when we leave.
My mum has had a 4 day week for about ten years now. Normally Thursdays + weekends off. I think rather than having 3 day weekends that would be a better way to go about it. Gives a day to recharge and do the ‘boring’ stuff without eating into your weekend.
… unless you work in the public sector in which case fuck you.
How will affect me as a nurse? I already work three days/week, 12hrs shift? Will I get a pay rise? Or do we work less on same wage? Both seem very unlikely to me…
There are two problems I have with the work obsessives.
One, is that they seem to assume that all paid work is public spirited in nature. This assumption is false. Much paid work in the UK is socially harmful. Even the very narrative of “economic growth” is exceedingly doubtful when examined. Do we really need a perpetually growing economy, which encourages mass-consumption and waste? Is that compatible with a sustainable living?
Two, they have no right to tell me what I should be doing. FWIW, most of my free time is spent on projects that I think will be more beneficial to the world than anything I’m capable of doing now in a paid role. But even if this weren’t so, they have no right to tell me what I should be doing for 8 hours a day.
This is your friendly reminder that if you’re in a job that won’t allow it that doesn’t mean you should try and ruin it for people who can by being a little bitch.
Is it talking about a 4 day work week. E.g 28 hour work week. Or it is talking about compressed hours e.g 35 hours compressed into 4 days?
Because the latter isn’t a 4 day work week it’s compressed hours and has always been a thing
Just making reality what is already semi fact. Lots of places have to some degree of officiality half arsed Fridays.
I’ll take “things that’ll never happen” for £200. I mean please: Nothing comes for free, either they’ll offer 4 day work weeks at a loss of 1/5th of your pay, or there won’t be an offer at all.
Regardless, most of us will keep working five (or more) days to survive.
As a pub owner, this is great news. Obviously this won’t affect my business in terms of hours, doubt people would be pleased if all the hospitality sector did this, after all, what will people do with their extra day off, which is where I step in and there is the good news, more money for me.
This reeks of being one of those things for people in cushy positions, while remaining a fantasy for people in call centres or stacking shelves or care for 9 quid an hour for 5 or 6 days a week on a rota that changes every week.
The latter went from being “unskilled workers” to “essential workers” and back to being “unskilled workers” very quickly, didn’t they?
4 on, 4 off – 9 hour days (including 1 hour each day for lunch). The issue I faced when doing the old 9-5 Mon-Fri was that it just turned into a routine of :
Monday (fuck, back to work. I can’t be arsed – demotivated)
Tuesday (ok, got over the Monday blues maybe I’ll do some work today)
Wednesday (Jesus, only half way through this bloody week – demotivated)
Thursday (ok, get through today and tomorrow – then I can do what I want for two days)
Friday (yes yes yes, so close to sweet freedom. Just don’t fuck anything up so no-one hassles you)
Friday/Saturday – drink/hangover
Sunday – hangover
It just became an inescapable routine and unhealthy. I also probably only did 3 days of solid work.
I’d love to have Wednesdays off each week and then the weekend. Really breaks the week up into manageable chunks.
But I work in NHS finance so that will never happen.
Does that mean I have to do the same amount of work in fewer hours?
There’s so many people moaning it’s not going to work for them in their specific job. Of course, nothing is going to suit everyone. But for those that this will work for, it’s such a great idea.
I don’t think I was ever not ready for a shorter working week
I wonder if this might be extended to schools. Maybe à la France; I believe they have Wednesday (afternoons?) off.
What do we need to do to get ready? Because I believe I am ready.
And here I am fully stressed that 5 days arent enough to do all my tasks
I would love to see it but I cant see it happening. You remove 20% of something from a market and its value will increase with the increased demand. I cant see anyone accepting less profit, unless its forced on them.
I mean, the idea that someone has to work 40-50% of the hours they’re awake from when they’re 18 to 65 just to be allowed to not starve and make rent is pretty gross. Especially when huge sections of society now won’t be able to even own their own home or might not even be able to retire now. Most places won’t even take on part time, unless they have to. There isnt even the option to work less but have less for most people.
Wages have been driven down and rent driven up since Thatcher. I cant see the people who benefited from that giving it up without a fight. Its the excess wealth production thats demanded from our lives that makes us have to work for so much of it. You cant just take what you use. Someone has to make *enough* profit from you.
I work from home as a freelancer. Fuck the **4 day week** to. 3 and done for me.
I want to believe this, because it’s got clear benefits for a lot of people.
But given a lot of companies that have spent 2 years having WFH work more than fine, are currently starting to try and get people back in the office the moment the restrictions have lifted, i just don’t buy it.
Flex and WFH is working and is the best way forward. Anyone trying to minimise either one is really disingenuous.
Yeah like my company would ever allow that, they don’t even allow Flexi time or working from home unless forced to.
But good on the people and companies that can get it.
I think a four day week should definitely be standard.
25 comments
Flexible working
Get ready for the four-day working week
Younger managers are much more open to the idea than their bosses and female leaders like it too
Pilita Clark YESTERDAY
First it was working from home. Now it is the four-day working week that is shaking business life in ways that would have seemed unthinkable before Covid-19.
At least, that is what you might think from the headlines of the past few weeks. Last Tuesday it was The Landmark London, a swish hotel in Marylebone, which said it was offering a four-day week, on higher pay, to its chefs.
The day before that, a British division of Japan’s Canon camera company said it was considering a four-day week pilot for its 140-odd staff and UK think tanks said they were recruiting companies for a six-month trial of the concept.
Less than two weeks earlier, Canon’s Japanese rival, Panasonic, revealed plans to offer its staff a four-day option to improve their work-life balance. And before that, a shorter week was being tested, planned or launched everywhere from the UK’s Atom Bank to Unilever’s New Zealand offices, Iceland, Spain and the United Arab Emirates.
Recommended
FT SeriesBurnout: the next health crisis?
Can shorter working hours help avoid burnout and boost productivity?
But four-day fans should hold the champagne because new UK research reveals that, as things stand, the four-day working week is a long way from being rampant.
Just 7 per cent of managers have launched it, or have decided to do so, according to Be The Business, a British non-profit group set up to foster productivity.
That is up slightly from 5 per cent in February last year, when the group last surveyed directors across the country from small and medium-sized companies, and the share who say they are thinking about it has also gone up, from 17 to 20 per cent.
Nearly half of those without a shorter week say they are more likely to consider the concept than they were before the pandemic, but almost 30 per cent say they would never consider it.
These findings chime with those from another survey of UK managers from mostly larger businesses that the Chartered Management Institute commissioned this month.
Only 6 per cent of them had a four-day week and although more than half said their organisation was actively considering the idea, or would do so, a striking 73 per cent said they thought it very unlikely it would be adopted.
Intuitively, it still seems hard to imagine how shifting to a four-day week benefits a business . . . But intuition can be flawed
That is despite the fact that large majorities thought a four-day week would boost productivity while making employees happier and easier to retain.
Yet I suspect it will not be long before the four-day week begins to canter rather than creep. Why? Because younger managers are a lot more interested in the idea than the older leaders they are on track to replace.
Nearly 80 per cent of senior managers under the age of 35 liked the thought of adopting a four-day week compared with 56 per cent of those aged 55 or older, the Chartered Management Institute data showed.
That age gap was also evident in the Be The Business research, which also showed female bosses were slightly keener on the shorter week than men: 64 per cent versus 57 per cent.
It has certainly worked well for Rachel Garrett, the 40-year-old managing director of CMG Technologies, a highly specialised metal injection moulding business in Suffolk. The company moved its 30-odd staff to a four-day week in 2015, with no cut in pay, in the hope it would keep them contented.
“For us, retaining staff and keeping staff happy is critical,” Garrett told me last week, adding turnover had increased by 25 per cent since the shorter week began, while profits had jumped 200 per cent.
She does not think the four-day week is entirely responsible for this, but believes it has had a significant influence.
Intuitively, it still seems hard to imagine how shifting to a four-day week benefits a business, despite the growing number of case studies suggesting it can. But intuition can be flawed.
The once bold idea of a weekend arose after the Industrial Revolution ushered in frenzied factory work that left workers in a state of always-on exhaustion. As British policy analyst, James Plunkett, recounts in his book, End State, progressive employers found shorter hours energised workers, whose hourly productivity and overall output rose.
Perhaps it is not so hard to imagine that workers burnt out by today’s revolution in technology might be more productive if the two-day weekend stretched to three.
pilita.clark@ft.com
Workers know they are the ones underpinning the oh so precious economy.
We had to stay at home. We did.
Now we decide when we leave.
My mum has had a 4 day week for about ten years now. Normally Thursdays + weekends off. I think rather than having 3 day weekends that would be a better way to go about it. Gives a day to recharge and do the ‘boring’ stuff without eating into your weekend.
… unless you work in the public sector in which case fuck you.
How will affect me as a nurse? I already work three days/week, 12hrs shift? Will I get a pay rise? Or do we work less on same wage? Both seem very unlikely to me…
There are two problems I have with the work obsessives.
One, is that they seem to assume that all paid work is public spirited in nature. This assumption is false. Much paid work in the UK is socially harmful. Even the very narrative of “economic growth” is exceedingly doubtful when examined. Do we really need a perpetually growing economy, which encourages mass-consumption and waste? Is that compatible with a sustainable living?
Two, they have no right to tell me what I should be doing. FWIW, most of my free time is spent on projects that I think will be more beneficial to the world than anything I’m capable of doing now in a paid role. But even if this weren’t so, they have no right to tell me what I should be doing for 8 hours a day.
This is your friendly reminder that if you’re in a job that won’t allow it that doesn’t mean you should try and ruin it for people who can by being a little bitch.
Is it talking about a 4 day work week. E.g 28 hour work week. Or it is talking about compressed hours e.g 35 hours compressed into 4 days?
Because the latter isn’t a 4 day work week it’s compressed hours and has always been a thing
Just making reality what is already semi fact. Lots of places have to some degree of officiality half arsed Fridays.
I’ll take “things that’ll never happen” for £200. I mean please: Nothing comes for free, either they’ll offer 4 day work weeks at a loss of 1/5th of your pay, or there won’t be an offer at all.
Regardless, most of us will keep working five (or more) days to survive.
As a pub owner, this is great news. Obviously this won’t affect my business in terms of hours, doubt people would be pleased if all the hospitality sector did this, after all, what will people do with their extra day off, which is where I step in and there is the good news, more money for me.
This reeks of being one of those things for people in cushy positions, while remaining a fantasy for people in call centres or stacking shelves or care for 9 quid an hour for 5 or 6 days a week on a rota that changes every week.
The latter went from being “unskilled workers” to “essential workers” and back to being “unskilled workers” very quickly, didn’t they?
4 on, 4 off – 9 hour days (including 1 hour each day for lunch). The issue I faced when doing the old 9-5 Mon-Fri was that it just turned into a routine of :
Monday (fuck, back to work. I can’t be arsed – demotivated)
Tuesday (ok, got over the Monday blues maybe I’ll do some work today)
Wednesday (Jesus, only half way through this bloody week – demotivated)
Thursday (ok, get through today and tomorrow – then I can do what I want for two days)
Friday (yes yes yes, so close to sweet freedom. Just don’t fuck anything up so no-one hassles you)
Friday/Saturday – drink/hangover
Sunday – hangover
It just became an inescapable routine and unhealthy. I also probably only did 3 days of solid work.
I’d love to have Wednesdays off each week and then the weekend. Really breaks the week up into manageable chunks.
But I work in NHS finance so that will never happen.
Does that mean I have to do the same amount of work in fewer hours?
There’s so many people moaning it’s not going to work for them in their specific job. Of course, nothing is going to suit everyone. But for those that this will work for, it’s such a great idea.
I don’t think I was ever not ready for a shorter working week
I wonder if this might be extended to schools. Maybe à la France; I believe they have Wednesday (afternoons?) off.
What do we need to do to get ready? Because I believe I am ready.
And here I am fully stressed that 5 days arent enough to do all my tasks
I would love to see it but I cant see it happening. You remove 20% of something from a market and its value will increase with the increased demand. I cant see anyone accepting less profit, unless its forced on them.
I mean, the idea that someone has to work 40-50% of the hours they’re awake from when they’re 18 to 65 just to be allowed to not starve and make rent is pretty gross. Especially when huge sections of society now won’t be able to even own their own home or might not even be able to retire now. Most places won’t even take on part time, unless they have to. There isnt even the option to work less but have less for most people.
Wages have been driven down and rent driven up since Thatcher. I cant see the people who benefited from that giving it up without a fight. Its the excess wealth production thats demanded from our lives that makes us have to work for so much of it. You cant just take what you use. Someone has to make *enough* profit from you.
I work from home as a freelancer. Fuck the **4 day week** to. 3 and done for me.
I want to believe this, because it’s got clear benefits for a lot of people.
But given a lot of companies that have spent 2 years having WFH work more than fine, are currently starting to try and get people back in the office the moment the restrictions have lifted, i just don’t buy it.
Flex and WFH is working and is the best way forward. Anyone trying to minimise either one is really disingenuous.
Yeah like my company would ever allow that, they don’t even allow Flexi time or working from home unless forced to.
But good on the people and companies that can get it.
I think a four day week should definitely be standard.