Shorter weeks in the office could be an option for remote workers

A four-day working week would keep employees in the sights of bosses and ease concern of low productivity while giving workers a three-day weekend.

Here’s an idea for employers struggling to get staff back to the office – bribe them with a four-day week.

That’s four days of 9.5 hours on full pay – in the office. It might just work for bosses, given that many will probably have to settle for many employees doing at best two or three days in the office on a regular basis.

A four-day week would keep workers in the sights of bosses and allay their fears of low productivity while giving workers a formal three-day weekend. If you’re an employer who suspects staff are skiving off at home on Friday anyway, there would be nothing lost. For employees, the value of a four-day week is obvious with fewer commutes and a clear delineation of time off.

The four-day model that has been touted and trialled around the world is 100:80:100 – 100 per cent pay for 80 per cent time for 100 per cent productivity – which fails to convince many employers sceptical about the productivity outcome.

But the compressed model – 100 per cent of hours in four days instead of five – is an option that might be more easily agreed to by both parties under awards and agreements. It will be interesting to see whether in this period of revolution in working patterns, it can be used as a carrot to get people back to the office rather than attempting to mandate a return with no pay-off for employees.

Four-day weeks, whether with longer or regular hours, are not practical in some jobs, but these are the same jobs where it’s not easy to stay home: nursing, teaching, public-facing and care jobs have significant rostering challenges under a shorter week.

Legislating changes to the National Employment Standards (NES) to allow a four day week is a “pipe dream”, despite the positive outcomes from several experiments, according to Dr Ben Hamer, a workplace specialist who is chief futurist at CreativeCubes.Co.

In Australia, Bunnings is trialing a model (38 hours over four days) as is Unilever (100:80:100), and academics and the not-for-profit group, 4-Day Week Global, have overseen or analysed how it has worked in at least 35 small to medium organisations. In March, the Senate select committee on work and care recommended a public service trial of the 100:80:100 model.

Overseas, several countries have introduced measures: Spain tried a 32-hour work week for 200 companies over three years, without reducing employee salaries, with the government subsidising the salary difference; in 1996, Finland introduced the Working Hours Pact, which allows employees to adjust working hours to suit their lifestyle; workers at more than 60 British companies trialled a four-day work week between June and December last year and 92 per cent of businesses opted to either continue with the trial or adopt it permanently; Belgians have the right to work a four-day week with employers needing to justify any refusal; and a 2019 pilot at Microsoft Japan found a 40 per cent increase in productivity plus “a significant decrease in operational costs”.

The push is on but ultimately companies will need to be convinced that fewer days at work does not lead to lower profits.

Hamer has done modelling showing a four-day week could lead to an increase of $2bn per year in GDP out to 2030 as industries reallocate resources more efficiently, thus reducing overheads and increasing demand that stimulates investment, employment, national exports and household spending.

He concedes there are “a heap of assumptions” in his model, which relies on an extra day of recreation changing the spending patterns of individuals, as well as an increase in productivity. “It turns out when you give people one less day, they end up getting more done, “ he writes. “Research shows that overworked employees are less productive, so it’s logical the reverse would hold true – that working less in terms of fewer days increases productivity.”

Hamer says closing the workplace one day out of five would result in lower costs, but not by as much as 20 per cent. His model assumes only half this amount would be saved and that the savings would apply on average to only half of the affected firms – either because they have already adopted efficient working arrangements or because compressed working hours are not applicable to all workplaces.

The model looks at 84 industries as well as details about states, employment, intermediate demand, investment, household and export use. It assumes no savings in agriculture, mining, manufacturing, utilities or retail trade because these sectors are unlikely to adopt a four-day week because of the need to service customers. The model assumes a 5 per cent saving in administrative support in white collar industries – banking and finance, insurance, superannuation, rent/hire, legal services, professional, scientific and technical services, administrative support services, and public administration and regulation.

Four-day weeks are attractive to most workers, but one risk is that long working days lead to fatigue, and in the current economic environment a further worry is that people will take on an extra job on their extra day off.

Hamer thinks that while there’s no chance in the short to medium term of any legislated change to the NES, there is room to move in enterprise agreements and awards which already allow for compressed working weeks and a range of different schedules. “As more and more organisations offer the four-day week as a key lever to attract and retain talent in the new world of work, we’ll see a groundswell drive, a gradual movement to more and more companies doing the same,” he says. “My view is once we had a seven day work week and we moved to a six, then to five. It’s about time we have the conversation (about a four-day week).”

Some of the pushback to the 100:80: 100 model, he says, comes from employers feeling that if their staff can get their work done in four days, then why aren’t they already getting it done in four? The temptation is to want to keep them on five days and get more out of them.

Three and a half years on from the start of Covid-19 lockdowns, however, there is little sign workers want to return to the daily commute even as many employers test the waters with mandates about office attendance. The hybrid work model will be modified over time but some version is surely here to stay. Such flexibility was unimaginable before the pandemic – just as a four-day week looked like pie in the sky for decades. Watch this space.