The five-day workweek has been the U.S. legislation for 80 years, however a majority of People need to change over to a four-day workweek, in keeping with a brand new Bentley-Gallup Enterprise in Society Report.
Seventy-seven p.c of U.S. employees surveyed say a four-day, 40-hour workweek would have an especially or considerably optimistic impact on their well-being. Workers additionally mentioned they wished their firms to supply psychological well being days (74%) and restrict the work they’re anticipated to carry out exterior of labor hours (73%).
Some firms, together with Amazon, Basecamp, Microsoft, and Panasonic, supply four-day workweek choices, however most companies are sticking with the tried-and-true five-day mannequin. Why? Consultants say it is a mixture of decrease productiveness (though research present this to not be the case), staffing points, elevated prices, and complicated modifications to operations.
Plus, there’s simply an total resistance to alter.
“It has been nearly 100 years we have operated with the present workweek,” Juliet Schor, an economist and sociologist at Boston Faculty who has researched the four-day workweek, instructed The Washington Put up. “I do not assume we will count on it [to change] in a single day.”
A quick historical past of the five-day workweek
Responding to strain from labor unions, Henry Ford was one of many first employers to standardize a five-day, 40-hour workweek in 1926. Ford additionally noticed that minimizing hours would result in a affluent center class, the spine of his manufacturing facility employees. Within the early days of the Industrial Revolution, People labored like canine, averaging 100 hours per week, six-days every week—one thing wanted to alter. In 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt handed the Truthful Labor Requirements Act, which made the 40-hour workweek the legislation of the land.
How a 4-day workweek works
However in recent times, many firms have adopted a four-day workweek wherein workers are allowed to work 10-hour workdays, 4 days every week, as a substitute of eight-hour workdays, 5 days every week. The pay stays the identical, however the schedule modifications, permitting employees to take pleasure in an additional free day every week.
4-day workweeks are standard amongst millennials and Gen Z, who put a powerful worth on work-life steadiness. Actually, 92% of younger individuals say that they’d work longer hours in trade for a four-day workweek, in keeping with a Bankrate survey.
Final 12 months, greater than 33 firms within the UK did a four-day workweek trial run for six months. Afterward, a lot of the firms mentioned they’d not return to the five-day workweek, reporting that productiveness and worker happiness have been up.
Sluggish to undertake
Regardless of the keenness many workers have for a four-day workweek, their employers aren’t as jazzed. Solely 15% of U.S. employees say their firms supply four-day weekweeks, in keeping with a 2023 survey by ADP.
Change is tough, particularly in a risky financial system the place companies do not need to take probabilities. However business analysts say that in the end, the extra employees demand four-day workweeks the extra their bosses will bend to their will. It is all a matter of provide and demand, one thing firms know all about.
“As soon as some firms begin providing [four-day workweeks] and as soon as many employees begin to apply for these positions … it’d truly find yourself placing extra strain on firms to introduce this non-traditional perk,” Sarah Foster, a Bankrate analyst, instructed CNBC.
