Just imagine... Three-days off every weekend!Just imagine... A Three-day weekend, every single weekend!
In a shining ray of hope for workers around the world, a company in Auckland, New Zealand - which undertook a Four-day working week trial for Eight weeks - has declared it a success.
The firm in question, Perpetual Guardian, paid it's 240-staff members a full salary for four days’ work, and monitored the levels of stress, motivation an productivity from its workers.
From the outset, there was always the risk that reducing work hours would increase the stress on staff to achieve objectives while also leading to lower levels of output as working time was cut by a fifth.
But, as the trial rolled on, the researchers found quite the opposite.
Andrew Barnes, the chief executive at Perpetual Guardian, says he’s already made a recommendation to his board to take the policy beyond the initial eight-week trial.
And yes, the staff will remain on a full-time salary.
“The next thing is that I need to get the board to approve the recommendations in the next few weeks,” Mr Barnes told the NZ Herald.
To ensure an objective analysis during the trial, Mr Barnes invited academic researchers Jarrod Haar, a professor of human resource management at Auckland University of Technology, and Dr Helen Delaney, a senior lecturer at the University of Auckland Business School, into the building to observe the impact of the trial on the workforce.
“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,” said Mr Barnes.
Mr Barnes says that the trial shows that the reduced hours, in fact, had no impact on staff fulfilling their weekly tasks.
“Our leadership team reported that there was broadly no change in company outputs pre and during the trial. They perceived no reduction in job performance and the survey data showed a marginal increase across most teams.”
While it's easy to focus on the number of days staff at Perpetual Guardian were working, Mr Barnes says this really isn’t the point of the study.
“We’re paying for productivity,” he said. “We’re making a clear distinction here between the amount of hours you spend in the office and what we get out of that.”
Mr Barnes says this is relevant for the issues well beyond Perpetual Guardian, pointing out that a focus on productivity rather than the number of hours worked could help to address the problem of gender inequality in the workplace.
He argues that if a new mother or father, for instance, could fulfil their workplace obligations in reduced hours, then there’s no reason why she shouldn’t be given a full salary.
“If you can have parents spending more time with their children, how is that a bad thing?”
News of this trial is surely music to the ears of those who long for a Four-Day working week... Although, it remains to be seen if could work on larger scale.
Anyone want to volunteer to trial it here in Ireland?
