I recently had an epiphany (and kind of an obligation on my masters on writing about this) of what if working 4 days a week was the answer.
This
year a trusts firm called "Pepetual Gardian" in New Zealand decided to
make a trial for 8 weekes (March-April), where all there employees
worked only four days (payed 5).
And guess what?
Amazing NEWS!
"Our leadership team reported that there was broadly no change in company outputs pre and during the trial," Barnes explained in a press statement.
"They perceived no reduction in job performance and the survey data showed a marginal increase across most teams." Barnes
"What we've seen is a massive increase in engagement and staff satisfaction about the work they do, a massive increase in staff intention to continue to work with the company and we've seen no drop in productivity," Barnes explained to the New Zealand Herald.
Of course, it remains to be seen whether the impressive outcomes of the trial can be maintained if Perpetual Guardian indeed makes the four-day week a permanent change in its business.
But there's no doubt the benefits are many and varied for workers if they don't have to spend so much of their week slogging away at work.
Previous research has shown working full-time can be bad for your brain and mental health, and other analyses have also borne out that productivity suffers when employees have to work too much.
Did you know that working for long period of times is bad for your brain?
Back in April, a study led by Erin Reid from Boston University found that mangers couldn't tell the difference between consultants who worked 80 hours, and those who just pretended to. "While managers did penalise employees who were transparent about working less, Reid was not able to find any evidence that those employees actually accomplished less, or any sign that the overworking employees accomplished more," writes Green Carmichael.
Ericsson challenges Malcolm Gladwell Theory about 10,000 hours
For context, Gladwell, is a journalist that wrote "The Tipping Point" , "Blink", "Outliers" and many more amazing books; he has a theory about how many time you have to spend doing an activity to become an expert.
He firmly suggests that about 10,000 hours.
Multiple experiments done in Ericsson's lab have shown that people can commit themselves to only four or five hours of concentrated work at a time before they stop getting things done. Past the peak performance level, output tends to flatline, or sometimes even suffer.
"If you're pushing people well beyond that time they can really concentrate maximally, you're very likely to get them to acquire some bad habits," Ericsson tells Tech Insider. What's worse, those bad habits could end up spilling into the time people are normally productive, and suddenly even the shorter weeks are wasteful.
Ryan Carson, CEO of the technology education company Treehouse, has seen his employees become happier and more productive since he implemented the 32-hour work week back in 2006. Core to Carson's leadership philosophy is the belief that forcing people to work 40-hour weeks is nearly inhumane, he told the Atlantic last year.
A similar story is playing out at Reusser Design, a Midwest web development company that changed to a four-day week in 2013. Even though the company works longer hours to make up for the lost Friday, company founder Nate Reusser says productivity and engagement have never been better.
"You wouldn't believe how much we get done," he told CNN last year, adding that the policy motivates people to work harder, similar to how people hustle to finish projects before they go on vacation.
I agree that MORE ISNT BETTER. BETTER IS BETTER. We should all be daring to have trials and experiment with ourselves and our teams.
My rules of the 4-day workweek would be:
“Your day off each week is the time where your destiny is shaped and your dreams can be achieved. Don’t give up these huge payoffs for Netflix, junk food and gossip”
Sources:
Thank you for reading me,
Maria Albarrán