Rethinking the Future of Work #3
In which we clock our hours and days
In part 1, we looked into capped rewards and the decoupling of productivity and wage. In part 2, we lost the war for talent. Today, we’ll go full-time.
Today
True story: a little over a year ago, the Belgian government came up with the idea of giving people the option of doing their full-time job in four instead of five days. Politicians patted themselves on the back for yet another brilliant scheme. (Yes, that was sarcasm.)
According to the latest numbers, roughly 0.5% of eligible people took the offer. Sure, for some people it can help to have an extra day to take care of relatives, for example. Here's the problem: four days or five days - with the same number of total hours! - does little to address the major cause of sick days, which is burnout.
It's not about distribution, but quantity and content.
Quantity: A 2016 study of over 1,500 people found that burnout risk is directly correlated with working hours, in a dose-dependent manner. More hours, higher burnout risk. Hours. Not days.
Content: Of course, it's not all about hours. A 2018 Gallup study found that job-related factors most associated with burnout are unfair treatment, unmanageable workload, lack of role clarity, lack of support, and time pressure.
Guess what doesn't help with any of that? Right, spreading the same amount of hours with the same job content over four instead of five days. Good (here comes the pun) job!
Compare this with the recent news from the UK where they explored a four-day workweek with a comparative reduction in hours. Big success, both for employee well-being and productivity. It was good for the participating companies too. Revenue stayed the same or even increased slightly. 56 out of 61 companies that tried it intend to keep it up - that’s close to 92%.
And yet, the reluctance to consider a four-day workweek remains. After all, it’s not truly full-time. Or is it?
Yesterday and tomorrow
In most countries and companies, full-time equates to an average of forty working hours per week.
Here’s some 2021 data I pulled from the OECD data center:
Where does that forty-hour average come from, though?
The story goes that it began with Henry Ford who cut back on worker time in his factories from nine to eight hours per day in 1914. Productivity surged (!) and other companies followed suit.
But, the story has older beginnings. In 1594, king Felipe II of Spain passed an edict that stipulated:
Ley VI Que los obreros trabajen 8 horas al dÃa repartidas como convenga.
Or:
Law VI That the workers work eight hours a day distributed as appropriate.
In any case, the eight-hour day only found widespread implementation after factory owners during the Industrial revolution saw it didn’t grossly affect their bottom line too much.
This tells us a few interesting things:
We are not early twentieth-century factory workers.
What constitutes ‘full-time’ is decided by politicians and business owners.
In our modern office-work-dominated Western world, (moderately) scaling back on hours does not affect productivity and improves well-being (on average).
In other words, what are we doing?
Of course, there are plenty of caveats.
If you love your job and enjoy working forty hours or more and it brings you pleasure and/or purpose, go for it.
As we’ve seen before, profits don’t tend to roll down the pyramid easily, so many people have to work more than forty hours per week to pay rent, buy food, care for loved ones… (That’s a whole other can of capitalistic worms.)
If you’re a freelancer, both previous points probably apply to some extent.
Now, back to work.
To put my metaphorical money where my mouth is, I’ve put in a request at the DayJob™ to scale back to 80%, a four-day workweek (32 hours in my case). Pending approval. Why? Many reasons, some of which are personal. I want more time to read, to write, to live, and to force myself into making some necessary changes. Because I live alone (sob) and try to spend sensibly, I should be able to make it - haha - work. On the other hand, my rent recently jumped as if trying to break the Olympic high-jump record, and energy and food bills come in at a commendable second and third place. We’ll see how it goes, I suppose…
Completely unrelated sidenote (or is it?): a short story of mine recently got published. If you like coming-of-age science fiction things and tarot cards, it’s free for you to read here. It will take you exactly 12 minutes and 19 seconds to read. Perfect coffee break.