Major 'roadblock' to Australia ushering in a four-day work week revealed: 'Always difficult'

Sabrina Scherm said Aussie workers aren’t ready to give up certain work perks to enjoy a four-day work week. (Source: Supplied/Getty)

While plenty of Australians might want a four-day work week, many wouldn’t sacrifice their current arrangements to make way for it. HiBob’s latest report looked at how far workers would go to have this new-age policy introduced at their workplace.

The research found Aussies would be very reticent in giving up their pay or work-from-home (WFH) arrangements just to enjoy a shorter working week. Sabrina Scherm, HiBob’s customer success manager, told Yahoo Finance this could create a “roadblock” in seeing a four-day work week applied en masse across Australia.

“From an HR perspective, it’s always difficult to actually remove something from employees,” she said.

After interviewing 2,000 people across the country, the HR software company found that there wasn’t a lot of wiggle room when it came to compromises.

Only 15 per cent of Aussies said they would take a pay cut to work four days a week.

Just 22 per cent said they would be happy to reduce their holiday allowances for the shorter work week.

Additionally, a third said they would go into an office full-time to get the new-age policy.

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However, women would be far more unlikely to compromise on that front, with just 23 per cent willing to give up their WFH agreements, compared to 41 per cent of men.

Scherm told Yahoo Finance that the huge gender gap is likely due to women preferring to work from home to help them better manage their children or family responsibilities.

But she added that employers and managers shouldn’t look at the four-day work week as a “one or the other” for work perks like WFH setups, but rather as an add-on.

“I think companies can actually arrange it without taking something away,” she said.

“In terms of working from home and working from the office, it really comes down to how companies are viewing the results of their employees.”

But Scherm acknowledged that ushering in a four-day work week is no small feat that can be done overnight.

The HiBob expert feels this is likely the big issue stopping many companies and businesses from hopping on the trend.

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“It will be a lot of responsibility for HR to drive that change, but obviously it needs to come from the management and cascade that down,” she said.

“Also, from an HR perspective, how do contracts need to change? What does it mean for public holidays for part-timers as well?

“Are they actually then considered as full-time employees, or does that look even different? So I feel like there are a lot of questions that are not answered yet.”

Major companies like Bunnings, Medibank, and Telstra have been testing out the four-day work week.

For Medibank’s trial, hundreds of workers have been operating at 100 per cent pay for 80 per cent of their normal hours, and the results have been huge.

After six months, staff reported being 4.5 per cent more satisfied with their job and 6.7 per cent were more engaged with their day-to-day tasks.

The shortened week also helped these employees be more willing to go “above and beyond” their normal duties.

Christian Miran previously worked at Medibank and led the insurer’s trial.

Christian Miran said Australia is ‘ready’ to try something different. (Source: Supplied) · Source: Medibank

Now working at Thrive Nation, he told Yahoo Finance that the four-day work week concept wasn’t alien to much of Australia and believes many companies are “ready” to take it on.

“This is the next wave of understanding of how we could be more productive,” he said.

“Globally, labour cost productivity stats are stagnating since the 60s. We’ve kind of squeezed as much as we can out of people.

“We’ve got to find new ways and I think Australia is not immune from that and our burnout rates are equally as high in Australia as they are around the world.”

Research from recruiter Robert Half found just over a third of Australian employees expected their organisation would transition to a four-day work week within the next five years.

Another 37 per cent said their company “might” transition within this timeframe.

Scherm said it’s worth giving it a go and seeing if it produces better results.

“The five-day working week started like 150 to 200 years ago,” she told Yahoo Finance.

“Maybe it’s time to change that. But it will only work when workers don’t have to compromise on their current benefits as well.”

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Major ‘roadblock’ to Australia ushering in a four-day work week revealed: ‘Always difficult’

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