The 4-day week around the world

Less than a century ago, we went from the six-day week with its eight-hour shifts to the forty-hour week over five days, thanks to the famous Henry Ford. Today, the revolution continues: the four-day week is gaining ground all over the world.

The goal? To address staff shortages and see the impact of reduced working hours on business productivity and worker well-being, but also on the environment and gender equality.

In our southern neighbors, it is an increasingly tangible reality, "it is even the real big change in work in recent decades," believes Daniel Hamermesh, professor of economics at the University of Texas. The same thing in Iceland, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom, South Korea and Japan.

Between 2015 and 2019, 2,500 Icelanders tested the 35-hour week in four days, without lowering wages or squeezing the lemon! However, this did not lead to "any decrease in productivity or service delivery" and worker well-being had "improved considerably". In 2019, the giant Microsoft experimented with this model in Japan for a month: productivity increased by 40%! In 2021, the government of this country where work is in the spotlight and overwork just as much, proposed to all companies to expand this initiative in order to establish a better work-life balance.

Last June, the UK plunged into it on a large scale, with 3,300 employees in seventy companies, across sectors, over six months. This trial, the largest ever conducted, will have the advantage of giving companies more time to experiment and gather data.

And in Quebec?

A study by Indeed found that 41% of Canadian employers are considering alternative hybrid schedules and new work styles. The survey found that 51% of large companies with more than 500 employees would be likely to implement four-day work weeks, and 63% of mid-sized organizations (between 100 and 500 employees) also said they were open to it. The Ontario Liberal Party even announced that it would test the four-day week if it wins the 2022 election!

In Quebec, the shortened week is gaining more and more followers. Slowly, but surely. The David Suzuki Foundation was one of the first to implement it, in the 1990s, in the name of reducing polluting emissions. Expedibox, a supplier of smart lockers, has been offering a shortened week since its founding in 2017. The video game studio Eidos, the start-up Edibox, the company Diffusion Solutions Intégrées, the marketing agency Rablab and the T-shirt manufacturer Poches & Fils have recently got involved. And there are others. The latest is the agency Aura Social , which decided to test the four days without change in salary for the summer. What if the experiment continued when school starts again?

At Poches & Fils, that's what happened last year. The formula, which was supposed to be spread out over the three summer months, was a success. It was definitively adopted in October 2021, the date from which the 500 employees at the Eidos studios in Montreal and Sherbrooke no longer worked on Fridays either. "It's a way to help the troops recharge their batteries, increase productivity and promote retention," said Marie-Chantal Ledoux, CRHA human resources strategist and senior director of Talent and Culture at Eidos Montreal.

How to implement it?

Like anything, implementation has its share of challenges. Implementing the four-day workweek in a company requires a completely different way of doing things. We are not talking about the "compressed workweek" here, not so many hours but over four days! It is therefore necessary to rethink the organization of work, cut out certain unnecessary meetings and focus on periods of concentration (where you are not disturbed by colleagues) to devote yourself to specific tasks.

Marie-Chantal Ledoux shares her experience: “Before launching, each team had to scrutinize its ways of doing things to establish strategies to improve its efficiency. Many suggested tools to speed up work and collaborate better or to add automation. We also optimized meetings, which are shorter. And, after two hours in the afternoon, we no longer plan meetings. It's free time to work in a focused manner.”

Schedule spread over four days, one day off per week according to each person's choice, or 32 hours spread over five days. We can provide some flexibility based on each person's needs so that this extra day off does not become a poisoned chalice. We must ensure that the objectives remain realistic and find the right balance between the targets set by the organization and the well-being of the workers. Managers must be able to develop tools to assess the gains or losses related to these changes, and determine in advance their unit of measurement, the burnout rate for example.

Working less does not eat into profitability

Aim for 32 hours and keep the same wages, without affecting the profitability of the company? Stay productive, or even be more so in four days rather than five? It is possible!

For Sabaa Khan, Executive Director, Quebec and Atlantic, at the David Suzuki Foundation, staff well-being translates into savings. “There are fewer cases of burnout; fewer sick days; and fewer absences,” she explains. “Rested, less stressed employees are more productive.”

Reduced burnout, increased employee satisfaction, improved creativity and productivity : the benefits are as much for the employee, who is happier and healthier, as for the company, which benefits from motivated employees.

The benefits of the four-day week are numerous. In addition, in our labour market marked by competition and labour shortages, flexibility is a decisive argument for recruiting and retaining talent.