Hundreds of Medibank employees start trial of four-day work week

It’s one of the largest companies to announce a shift to the new work model that gives staff a long weekend every week.

A major Aussie employer has begun a trial of the four-day work week in an effort to improve employee satisfaction.

Private health insurer Medibank said it was “challenging long-entrenched traditional ways of working” by offering 250 of their employees a six-month trial of the four-day work week starting this month.

The trial was designed with 4 Day Week Global, a leader in workplace transitions, and would be monitored and measured by Macquarie University’s Health and Wellbeing Research Unit to refine the initiative over time.

The experiment is based on the 100:80:100 model, whereby employees maintain 100 per cent of their pay but reduce their work hours to 80 per cent.

Medibank will trial the four-day work week for 250 employees. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Tertius Pickard

However, they are required to complete the same amount of work in the four-day-period.

Medibank People, Spaces and Sustainability Group lead Kylie Bishop said this was the next step in the company’s approach to a more innovative and high-performance culture.

“There are lots of pressures out there right now, whether it’s cost of living or people managing their work and home commitments,” she said.

“We’re constantly thinking about how we can help balance that for our people and invest in their health and wellbeing to help prevent issues like burnout.”

She said the company hoped it could empower employees to focus on work that had the greatest impact for customers and cut down on wasted work.

The trial will run for six months and will be monitored by Macquarie University researchers. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Tertius Pickard

“The goal is not to work a compressed work week but to find opportunities in our work to rethink wasted or non-value add work (and) remove bureaucracy that’s not effective to make space for the gift of time,” she said.

“We will continue to support our customers at the same levels or higher as we’ve always done.”

The company says that by creating more flexibility within their teams, employees will be happier and healthier and ultimately this will reduce absenteeism and help employee retention.

Macquarie University’s Health and Wellbeing Research Unit will independently measure a range of employee and customer metrics, including customer advocacy, and operational metrics like absenteeism and attrition, productivity and performance effectiveness.

They will look at the impact on absenteeism, productivity and even sleep patterns of participants. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Christian Gilles

The team will also monitor a range of employee health and wellbeing metrics to understand what impact the change has on the wellbeing of participants.

Medibank said early feedback from employees suggested they were “looking forward to having even more time to focus on their health and wellbeing”, including more time for rest, family, friends, exercise, cooking and hobbies.

Part-time employees participating in the trial will receive their time off at a pro-rata rate.