UNILEVER may be onto something — but before we delve into that — why exactly did we breakup the week into five days of work and two days of rest (during the weekend)? There must have been a compelling reason for splitting the seven day week into a five day workweek and a two day weekend.

The BBC Business article entitled “Unilever explores four-day working week” is actually what triggered this thought exercise. In the light of work disruptions brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, let's try to see if this proposal has some merit.

The Workweek and the Weekend

According to WIKIPEDIA, the five day workweek was created in the United States back in 1908 — to allow Jewish workers to celebrate Sabbath day properly.

Similar practices followed, until 1940, wherein the two day weekend was adopted nationwide — in compliance with the 40-hour workweek provision defined in the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act.

Now, let's assume we were not obliged by our religion(s) to worship on a specific day of the week. Does it make any sense to peg work output to a specific set of workdays? Is this done so that work can be easily monitored, rather than as a way of improving productivity / output / employee satisfaction?

More importantly — Is work 'time' more important that work 'output'?

Several articles have already been written on this topic — by FORBES.COM, SHRM.ORG, NPR.ORG and CNN.COM; among others. Although seemingly a popular topic, why does it seem that the adoption of a Four-Day Workweek by industry seems so slow? Is it due to a lack of merit?

Potential Roadblocks to the adoption of a Four-Day Workweek

• Untested Approach — Some organization may be unsure if (or are even skeptical that) a four day workweek will have any advantages over a normal five day workweek
• Compensation Concerns — Concerns regarding computing take-home pay or overtime could leave the initiative dead in the water
• Employee Availability — Will a shorter workweek result in reduced employee availability?
• Workload or work volume requires a five day (or more) workweek — Some organizations already have a problem meeting targets or demand with a five-day workweek, so a four-day workweek will just make things worse
• Productivity — If an organization's productivity is lagging, a shorter workweek may not help
• Legal Complications — Union Agreements, pertinent Labor Regulations and the like may make it difficult, possibly impossible, to implement a new or shorter workweek
• Why change something that works? — Fear of changing something that already provides good results, or just fear of change
• Who will handle the customers? — If an organization already has issues handling customers with a normal workweek, a shorter workweek may not bring the desired results

There are definitely some types of work that will be impacted if people report one day less for work — Health Workers (such as doctors and nurses) easily come into mind. But the argument that these workers usually do not work five days in a row anyway could also be made. So the four-day workweek will most probably have the greatest impact on regular office and factory workers.

For office workers, management will need to find a way to compress five days work into four days. Chances are the way around this will be to increase the number of hours a day — so that the total amount of time worked remains the same. However studies have shown that longer hours do not directly translate into more work done (You can check out these articles for more info on this: BLOOMBERG.COM article / CNBC.COM article).

What are the expected or desired benefits of a Four-Day Workweek?

• Higher Productivity — Counterintuitively, the studies quoted in the links above say that less hours worked translated into higher productivity (against the previous five day baseline level). Whether this is because workers did not want to 'lose' the much desired four-day workweek, or for other reasons, the bottom line is that higher overall output was achieved
• Higher Employee Satisfaction — A four-day workweek should bring about Better Quality of Life / Work-Life Balance
• Higher Employee Retention / Burnout Prevention — A four-day workweek may help improve employee retention and stem employee burnout, especially if the work environment is stressful
• Higher Job Desirability — Since four-day workweeks are still not the norm, an organization offering this arrangement may find itself at a significant advantage when being considered by applicants
• Employee Freedom — Employees will now have one additional day to do whatever they need to do, whether these are leisure activities, educational pursuits, family affairs or house chores / home improvement tasks.
• Less Commuting Days — Employees will have one day less of commuting
• Cost Reductions — i.e. Utilities / Maintenance charges for organizations most probably will go down

At the end of the day, the suitability of a four-day workweek will eventually depend on how well the organization ends up servicing the needs of the customer through the revised workweek schedule.

The customer ultimately only cares about whether their needs are being handled properly — and does not really mind / care if the workers are working a four-day or five-day workweek.

So is it a Good Idea or not?

The simple answer is a big fat “IT DEPENDS”.

Progressive organizations definitely will be willing to try out a four-day workweek, just to see if they can reap the reported benefits. Less adventurous organizations may decide to wait things out, and take a more cautious approach to changing their work schedules.

However, the ultimate success of any four-day workweek initiative really will depend on how well the organizations customers are served — regardless of any compromises made by management and any adjustments made by employees.