In the fight for a four-day work week, employees appear ready to walk the talk – and accept a pay cut if it means having an extra day free.
Global Jobs Council indeed Two-thirds of UK workers are willing to take pay cuts to gain a better work-life balance and more flexible working opportunities, the survey found.
Years-long battles to shorten the working week are often based on the premise that workers don’t want to sacrifice any pay to do the same job for five days.
But the latest figures show – in the UK at least – workers are taking the hit.
Danny Stacy, Indeed’s UK head of talent intelligence, said: “As more businesses begin to return to the office in whole or in part, the findings suggest that employers with flexible working policies may be better able to attract and retain staff.”
“While it’s no surprise that workers want fair pay, the desire for flexibility also signals a growing expectation that employers will design jobs that offer a better work-life balance, with many workers even willing to sacrifice wages to do so.”
It turns out that this model works not just for employees, but for businesses as well.
Last year, the UK trialled the world’s largest-ever four-day week trial, involving more than 60 companies and nearly 3,000 staff. Most businesses have maintained or increased productivity, and trials have shown significant reductions in employee turnover.
Of the businesses that participated in the survey, the majority chose to continue with the program.
Just a matter of time
Nearly a third of the 5,000 people Indeed spoke to believed the four-day work week would eventually become the norm, adding that they believed current workloads could be accomplished within that timeframe.
Experts leading the global economy say they agree.
Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase & Co., predicts the workweek will even get fewer than four days, saying earlier this month that the next generation of workers will work just 3.5 days a week thanks to artificial intelligence.
Dimon’s views were echoed by Christopher Pissarides, a professor at the London School of Economics who specializes in job automation.
Pissarides is increasingly confident that tools like ChatGPT can help employees achieve the same productivity in four days instead of five.
“We can get more happiness from work and enjoy more leisure time. We can easily switch to a four-day work week,” Pissarides told a conference in Glasgow.
However, despite this consensus, less than 1% of job adverts on recruitment websites currently promote a four-day work week.
Only a handful of companies in a few countries have embraced the concept of a shorter work week, which usually means employees work 33 hours a week instead of 38 hours.
Studies show that these reduced work hours are filled with more important tasks.
Research from 4 Day Week Global, a nonprofit advocacy group, shows that people who work five days get nothing done because their time is taken up by pointless meetings—and when they work less, they get more important work done.
It’s not just the private sector that’s conducting such experiments.Scotland’s civil service consists of more than 47,000 employeesThe company reportedly plans to test reducing the number of days it works per week to improve employees’ work-life balance and increase productivity.
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