So we all agree! The five-day work week must go. Working only four days a week can help protect their mental health, according to researchers.
A team at Boston College said their landmark investigation involving more than 100 companies and nearly 2,900 US workers, UK Australia, Canada and Ireland, had revealed that the shift was associated with a high level of satisfaction from both employers and employees.
It included an improvement in productivity and growth in revenue, a positive impact on physical and mental health and less stress and burnout. A 2024 vote of more than 2,000 US workers fully found that more than half of the respondents reported that they felt exhausted from chronic workplace stress within the past year.
“When my interviewer told her biggest client that she would no longer work on Fridays, it was the answer she got,” good for you! “Remembered Juliet Schor, a professor of sociology, earning on the Academic Board of Non-Profit, 4 days of Week Global.
The group was created to provide a platform for supporters of the four-day week. “I think it is symbolic of how people have changed their thinking about the nature of the work; we are at a point where the three-day weekend is now seen as more reasonable.”
Companies took place in a number of six -month trials created by 4 days of week Global. The pilot program did not reduce workers’ wages, and the companies and organizations were not interested in doing so. The study’s latest data from the first and second trials involving nearly 33 companies were released this month.
Researchers who were also from University College Dublin collected information from employees through research and interviews, and participating companies provided them with administrative data. They said they analyze changes before and after the trial as well as across countries and businesses, in employee demographics and in job types.
“Hours reduced, well-being improved and the most important organizational bottom lines that were maintained-all.
The main reason why employees had maintained productivity, according to their assessment, is that companies have fallen or reduced activities with questionable or low value, including meetings. Instead, meetings became phone calls and conversations via messaging apps.
Another key factor was that employees would use their third day off for the doctor’s appointments and other personal errands that they could otherwise try to stuff in a working day.
Due to these changes, employers would have lower costs for health care and less employee turnover with a four-day week, researchers found.
But it is not a “a size fits all” approach. Some accelerated jobs, such as producers, will have difficulty with a four-day work week, they noticed. Furthermore, they have not yet tested a four-day work week in a very large company. They included organizations of up to 5,000 people.
The study that was published Monday in the journal Nature human behavior, Buildings on previous research that have found similar benefits and are on the heels of a recent study that found long working hours can change the brain structure.
Fan told Gizmodo That they continued to trace participants six months after the trial ended, finding that all major effects “lasted”.
“Social change is always difficult, especially when it comes to challenging the deep -seated institutional logic that dictates, how, when and where we work. Let’s hope we won’t waste the crisis of Covid with regard to the deep workplace innovations it has fallen,” Fan said in a statement.