The five-day workweek has been the U.S. legislation for 80 years, however a majority of Individuals wish to change over to a four-day workweek, based on a brand new Bentley-Gallup Enterprise in Society Report.
Seventy-seven % of U.S. employees surveyed say a four-day, 40-hour workweek would have an especially or considerably constructive impact on their well-being. Staff additionally stated they wished their firms to supply psychological well being days (74%) and restrict the work they’re anticipated to carry out outdoors of labor hours (73%).
Some firms, together with Amazon, Basecamp, Microsoft, and Panasonic, provide 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 general 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, informed The Washington Put up. “I do not assume we are able to anticipate it [to change] in a single day.”
A short historical past of the five-day workweek
Responding to stress 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, Individuals labored like canines, averaging 100 hours per week, six-days per week—one thing wanted to alter. In 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt handed the Honest Labor Requirements Act, which made the 40-hour workweek the legislation of the land.
How a 4-day workweek works
However lately, many firms have adopted a four-day workweek through which workers are allowed to work 10-hour workdays, 4 days per week, as an alternative of eight-hour workdays, 5 days per 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. In actual fact, 92% of younger individuals say that they might work longer hours in alternate for a four-day workweek, based on a Bankrate survey.
Final yr, greater than 33 firms within the UK did a four-day workweek trial run for six months. Afterward, many of the firms stated they might not return to the five-day workweek, reporting that productiveness and worker happiness had been up.
Gradual to undertake
Regardless of the keenness many workers have for a four-day workweek, their employers will not be as jazzed. Solely 15% of U.S. employees say their firms provide four-day weekweeks, based on a 2023 survey by ADP.
Change is difficult, particularly in a unstable economic system the place companies do not wish to take possibilities. However trade analysts say that finally, 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 would really find yourself placing extra stress on firms to introduce this non-traditional perk,” Sarah Foster, a Bankrate analyst, informed CNBC.
