A third of businesses in the UK are of the opinion that the four-day workweek will become the norm for the majority of employees within the next ten years.
On the other hand, almost every company that anticipates cutting back on employee hours over the course of the next three years also anticipates reducing compensation.
According to recent findings published by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), only one percent of businesses have any plans to cut back on employees’ working hours without corresponding cuts in compensation (CIPD)
Only 11% of workers are ready to take a wage sacrifice in order to reduce the number of hours they work, despite the fact that 31% of workers would prefer to work fewer hours.
Any strategy to transition to a four-day week without decreasing compensation would depend on an organisation either boosting efficiency or working smarter (66%) or embracing more technology, according to the majority of businesses (68 per cent).
In point of fact, productivity, when measured in terms of volume of work or outputs, fell by thirty percent for those businesses that have reduced the number of hours their employees work. This comes at a time when Britain’s pitiful productivity record is once again in the spotlight, and the government is beating the drum for growth.
Having said that, it is important to emphasise that the concept of a weekend as we know it today is a very recent invention. The majority of factories used to open their doors on Saturday mornings and stay open until midday. In 1932, in an effort to combat the high unemployment rates created by the Great Depression, the United States of America made the decision to formally adopt a five-day work week. A five-day work week was implemented at Boots, the Chemist, in the United Kingdom in the year 1934.
Major sticking point
According to Jonathan Boys, who is a senior labour market economist at the CIPD, “the key sticking point is the requirement to boost productivity by a staggering 25 per cent to make up for the production lost from fewer days of work.”
A large study being conducted in the United Kingdom by the 4 Day Week campaign indicated that the majority of participants intended to continue with the lower working hours when the experiment of six months came to an end. In a survey of more than 70 businesses, almost 86% of respondents said that they intended to maintain the four-day workweek.
As the crisis in the cost of living continues to bite, the notion of a four-day work week also confronts a challenge. To raise their income, most people would attempt to increase the number of hours they work rather than look to reduce the number of hours they work.
The findings are based on a poll that was sent out to 2,000 businesses as well as data from the ONS Labour Force Survey on the working hours of workers.
