The New Zealand company behind a landmark trial of a four-day working week has declared it a success and will be adopting the new schedule full time.
Two-hundred-and-forty staff at Perpetual Guardian, a company which manages trusts, wills and estate planning, trialled a four-day working week over March and April this year, working four, eight-hour days but getting paid for five. Staff could choose whether to opt into the four-day week, or to work five days with flexible options such as starting or finishing early to avoid traffic congestion or manage their childcare commitments.
Before the trial, just over half of staff felt they could balance their work and home commitments. After the trial this number jumped to 78%. Staff stress levels decreased by seven percentage points across the board, while stimulation, commitment and a sense of empowerment at work all improved significantly, with overall life satisfaction increasing by five percentage points. Andrew Barnes, founder of Perpetual Guardian, said, ““For us, this is about our company getting improved productivity from greater workplace efficiencies. There’s no downside for us.”
Studies on worker productivity repeatedly show that less time = greater productivity. Companies have tried 4-day weeks, 6-hour workdays, and other ways of giving employees more time for their personal lives, and all of them show an increase in productivity. There is a minimum, too, below which productivity begins to decrease, but some studies show that as little as 3 hours a day can be as productive as 8 hours. If you give someone 8 hours to do a 3-hour job, they'll spend 8 hours of unfocused, inefficient work doing it. If you give them 3 hours after which they can go home, they'll do the job just as well or better in 3 hours of concentrated, efficient work.