Impact of a Four-day Work Week vs Traditional Five-day Work Week (Essay Sample)

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Impact of a four-day work week vs traditional five-day work week
Due to recent technological advances, the concept of a four-day work week has been increasingly popular in recent years. It's also worth noting that several organizations are already testing this notion with encouraging results for both employees and employers. There is a direct link between the two variables (Grosse, pg 18). They are less productive than their counterparts who work a typical or average week. Perpetual Guardian, a New Zealand-based business, tested a four-day work week.
More than two-thirds of companies believe that adopting a four-day work week will be vital for future business success, according to new study from Henley Business School. Researchers revisited the topic of work flexibility and the four-day workweek in November 2021, following the release of a white paper titled "Four Better or Four Worse," which examined views about flexible work and the four-day workweek. Seventy-eight percent of companies reported that their employees reported feeling less stressed and anxious, an increase of five percent from 2019 (Laker, pg 54).
Even though production levels remained unchanged, employees' job happiness, teamwork, work/life balance, and corporate loyalty all improved as well. As explained by Max Weber (1864-1920) alongside Karl Marx and Émile Durkheim the stress level of workers dropped from 45 percent to 38 percent as a result of this reduction this also define ‘Taylorism’ since people have find a way to do thing different through the four-week workday and achieve quite a result. Given that some of the world's most productive countries, such as Norway, Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands, often use an on average work 27 hours a week, the same hours advocated for a UK four-day work week, the results from this study aren't that surprising (Barnhizer et al. pg 48).
In contrast, productivity in Japan, a country famed for its overworked workforce, is ranked 20th out of 35 countries. Employees who work a four-day week are more satisfied and committed. With lots of time to rest and recuperate, employees are less likely to be anxious or take sick days. When they get back to work, they're eager to tackle new tasks. Using only six hours of work a week for five days a week, nurses at a care home found that three of the four outcomes were positive, including fewer sick days, improved health and emotional well-being, and more patient participation.
Countries with shorter working hours often have a lower carbon footprint, so lowering our work week from 5 to 4 days could have an environmental effect as well. Reduced commuting times and fewer days spent in enormous office buildings are two of the many benefits of a shorter work week. In the US, more than $1.88 million in energy expenses were avoided within the first ten months, and the enormous office building's carbon dioxide emissions were reduced by at least 6,500 tons per year (Chappell, pg 96). For one year, Utah estimates that it could save 13,000 metric tons of CO2, the equivalent of taking 2,400 automobiles off the road, simply by working one fewer day a week.
A four-day work week, on the other hand, requires the necessary support, technology, and workplace culture to be successfully implemented. There will always be hurdles and downsides to innovative ideas. Due to low customer satisfaction, the Utah study, which had some outstanding environmental outcomes as well as employee and employer benefits, had to be shut down. Customer complaints arose because government offices were closed on Friday.
Problems with client satisfaction could be alleviated by utilizing AI-powered websites and chatbots rather than relying solely on office-based workers. Many people mistook the idea of a four-day work week for a shorter work week (Chappell, pg 124). Employees who are required to work 35 hours a week, but spread out across four days, will be less productive, and this can have a negative influence on their work-life balance, engagement, and overall happiness. Work days should be seven hours long to get the best results from a 4-day work week.
Employees pretending to work from home is one of Musk's incorrect assumptions. Researchers have found that remote work increased productivity in the early days of the pandemic, based on both questionnaires and behavior tracking. Academics have recently shown that productivity in remote work has increased from 5% in summer 2020 to 9% in May 2022. That's because corporations and workers have become more adept at working from home (Barnhizer et al. pg 34).
Musk said in another leaked email that remote workers are phoning it in, despite this readily available data. As an illustration of how important it is to be visible, he points to his long work hours. A conventional leadership style based on the delusion of power is evident in the office's emphasis on being visible. As the name suggests, this cognitive bias is characterized by an overestimation of our ability to influence events outside of ou