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KSG2021: Why do we think a five-day or 40-hour workweek is necessary? It was something the unions negotiated back in the early 20th century, and now we act as if it’s set in stone and can’t be reimagined or renegotiated. We pulled the 40-hour workweek out of the air; we could just as easily make it a 32- or 35- or 36-hour workweek (or whatever). Why not?
MP4PAR: In 2002, I cut the office hours for our trade association to 4.5 days, closing at noon on Fridays. I also closed the office at 4 p.m. daily to allow staff to beat the horrendous D.C. rush hour. My decision shocked my peers. Productivity went way up. Morale went way up. Employee retention went up. It was the best thing I ever did for my staff. It bought me loyalty like never before. …
It is critical to think in new paradigms today to stay competitive. The 9-to-5 five-day workweek is deader than the secondary market for Nixon memorabilia.
JLC206: There’s a near-zero chance that 40 hours and five days is the optimal workweek for everyone in the modern economy. The 40-hour, five-day workweek evolved when “work” was showing up and making widgets. Of course we need to rethink it.
I suspect a lot of the reason a four-day week and fewer hours don’t seem to reduce productivity is that you’re already getting maximum productivity from employees without policing the exact number of hours, and they’re already working 32 to 35 hours. The final five or eight hours is a source of unhappiness because it’s a lie. Now we can all be honest about how much we really work. And it shouldn’t be about hours. It should be about the quality of the product.
ConcernedCitizen: The United States has long lagged behind other countries in work-life balance. Here, many workers are expected to work more than 40 hours per week (depending on the type of work), and four weeks of yearly vacation time is often a luxury afforded only to those with job seniority. About two weeks is more the norm, and even then workers struggle to take two consecutive weeks of vacation because of the headache of either working ahead before or catching up afterward. In many other countries, several weeks of yearly vacation time is standard, so workers actually have sufficient time to decompress and rejuvenate. I hope someday our “work ethic” will adjust more to the needs of workers rather than employers.
Johnny Canada: So tell me how you can reduce hours worked and maintain productivity in manufacturing jobs. You can’t, so this will be yet another initiative that benefits white- and gray-collar workers, resulting only in further alienation of blue-collar workers, who are the people who make many of the products that the rest of us consume.
MamaChris: I love the idea of a four-day workweek, but customers expect you to be available five days a week from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. How do you meet their needs if they’re in the office but you aren’t?
StephenN217: The only potential downside of remote working I can think of, which takes time to show up, is the loss of face-to-face mentoring of young or new employees.
They can benefit from the atmosphere within the workplace, from the ease of asking for advice and assistance, and from grasping the discipline of focusing on being productive. These are harder when working remotely.
TheNeanderthal: The time period I worked a four-day workweek (albeit four, 10-hour workdays) was the most efficient of my entire career.
Admiral J: Shorter workweeks would mean higher productivity, a much happier workforce and reduced sick time off, and all this would lead to higher profits for the companies. What legacy companies are missing with the work-from-home model is they can reduce one of their biggest costs to the bottom line — leased office space — leading to higher profits for the company. All this is hard for older executives to accept. For them, looking out over an office full of desks and people made them feel as if they were invincible.
CaliMatt: I remember looking forward to the peer-reviewed studies on this topic the past two years or so. As a cognitive psychologist, I now know that the results are significant and indicate that this type of plan is a good idea. What I am unsure of is the impact it will have on commercial real estate and the economy (not at all my field). And my second concern is that it will not benefit me. No one is even considering this plan for educators.
ReabinCA: Teacher here. I hope no one ever decides this is a great idea for our nation’s schools. Our students don’t learn enough as it is — and I say this as an educator, not as a disgruntled parent.
Hectorius: The coming crisis in commercial real estate is serious. The really important question: What are all these office blocks useful for in the future? I have spoken to several very, very large players in the space, and all agree it is a major problem. They have no answer. The write-downs have barely begun.
Narq: No one doubts it’s a better way, but corporations are like giant tanker ships — it takes a long, long, long time to stop and change directions. It’s going to take a great deal of effort to counter the inertia.
Tycho12345: Remember when people predicted email would make our work lives easier and we would have tons of free time?
Journeyman22: I fully agree with the premise of a four-day workweek. However, I don’t believe that the promise of artificial intelligence will help us get there. We’ve been down this road already. The promise of the personal computer and other technologies was going to bring on the four-day workweek. It didn’t happen. If the four-day workweek becomes the de facto standard one day, it will be because its positive impact on productivity (finally) becomes widely recognized. This article can only help.
jls5258: I would hazard a guess that a leader who is uncomfortable, admits it, and then leans into that and embraces it — rather than clinging to the old way just because it’s the way it has always been — also contributes to the increases Mr. Mullen has seen. More leaders need to become like him, willing to accept the uncomfortable and unknown in order to see the payoff.
ThatScienceGirl: I know it would be a lifesaver for me. I’m back to working a five-day week in the office, and on the weekends I have to clean, cook, buy groceries, tend to personal things. I have a college student who is miles away. I am a graduate student and volunteer a lot with many organizations. I could use a few more hours.
tiger49: Wish this wasn’t treated as such a surprise. In the late 1980s, I managed a 911 center in Texas where a four-day workweek covering 24/7 positions in the center was implemented. The change was not easy, but once done we saw the benefits in the first quarter. We also made trading shifts an easy process. Sick days approached nonexistence. The idea that each dispatcher could reliably depend on two three-day weekends a month and maximizing time off for family health-care needs or to deal with emergencies was tremendous, and that flexibility made for some innovative actions and ideas straight from those who benefited most from them.
It was a great idea — more than 30 years ago. Why is everyone so surprised now that it is beneficial, and why is it taking so long for businesses to switch?
kaleidoscopeeyes: The pros and cons of a four-day workweek and the pros and cons of working remotely are separate questions that are conflated this piece. I have zero problem believing people would be just as — if not more — productive during a four-day week, but it’s become increasingly clear that remote work can be not only broadly less efficient than in-person but has other downsides as well, negatively affecting collaboration, creativity, team-building, etc.
Retired_Teacher: I do think that working from home 100 percent of the time is not the greatest idea. Interaction and exchange with co-workers is important for building a community, for problem-solving and simply for energizing oneself. The isolation of the past three years has taken its toll on all of us. Some blend between in-person and remote work seems the best option.
Boss of Me: The five-day workweek is highly overrated. Work from home is going to become the longtime norm because people need a work-life balance and the 40-hour week doesn’t allow for that. You’ve got one day to do all your household chores and one day to rest. Where’s the fun day?
Back_to_Normal: This kind of open-mindedness is impressive. Too many senior executives are deeply vested in and wedded to the past, regardless of modern technology, capabilities and sensibilities.
Sleswift: I worry that the trucking industry will be an outlier because we are locked into the ridiculous concept of just-in-time delivery. Can’t wait for that next package to arrive, even if it means someone has to be unhappily toiling long, arduous hours.
Rombosse: The 40-hour workweek was instituted when the expectation was that there was someone else “at home” to take care of daily life. I think about this. A lot. It’s unnatural to devote your life to working so much. You get only one life.
BeneM83: This seems like a positive initiative that more employers should be open to, but I hope they retain flexibility for five-day workweeks.
I know that, for my family, having four longer workdays would actually make it harder to negotiate the windows of drop-off and pickup times for day care and restrict the availability of after-school activities.
Kevin from Minnesota: I live in Minnesota and would love to work there … wonder if I can get hired remotely?😀
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