This company switched to a 4 day work week and their business has been doing better The move was taken to prevent employees from quitting en masse, and it has paid off.
By Entrepreneur Staff •
This article was translated from our Spanish edition.
"Dramatically happier" workers, an increase in revenue and "outstanding" customer satisfaction scores are the result of reducing the workday to four days a week. This has been verified for more than six months by the non-profit educational organization Healthwise , based in Boise, United States.
After suffering a mass resignation that was part of the "Great Quit" phenomenon that emerged amid the pandemic, Healthwise consulted labor economist Juliet Schor , who has studied the nature of work since the 1990s. 1980 to establish a four-day weekday rehearsal for its employees in August 2021.
And since then, Heathwise CEO Adam Husney has had no regrets, as workers are now more productive than ever with this new system, where employees are paid for five days of work, but only show up for four. However, Husney did not change the amount of work that needed to be done in a week, leading employees to maximize fewer hours of work .
" Healthwise employees are spending their Fridays off doing family activities like sports or errands," Schor said at the TED2022 conference in Vancouver, Canada, on Tuesday. "A mother of young children reported that she can now occasionally get a guilt-free pedicure."
Healthwise is one of a growing number of companies that are encouraging employees to work fewer hours to retain workers.
The devastating toll of the Covid-19 pandemic on the country has prompted many workers to reconsider whether their jobs are serving them, leading to mass resignations, according to organizational psychologist Anthony Klotz, who coined the trend the "Great Resignation." .
As part of the unexpected social movement, more than 38 million workers quit their jobs during 2021 in the United States, and the trend shows no signs of slowing down, as nearly a record 4.4 million Americans quit their jobs in February.
Schor said research indicates that shorter workweeks can reduce mental stress while improving job satisfaction and productivity.
On the other side of the world, European countries with shorter average working days, such as France and Germany, have higher productivity than countries with longer working weeks, such as the UK and Italy. Iceland has already trialled four-day workweeks and 85% of the population is currently working fewer hours or on track to do so.
