According to research by Professor Abigail Marks - who heads the Future of Work project at Newcastle University - a four-day working week may not be helpful and realistic to enact.
Professor Marks’s comments were made after the SNP government announced it was setting up a £10 million fund to enable some office businesses to cut workers’ hours without reducing their pay.
The Trade Union Congress (TUC) has also called on the government to help people work fewer hours, whilst receiving the same pay. The TUC - in calling for a four-day working week - is attempting to establish the groundwork for when technology, particularly AI, exceeds the capabilities of human employees, in order that transition is smooth and to ensure that employees and not just employers, reap the benefits of the new technology.
Scotland is the latest nation to trial the four-day working week, whilst similar trials are taking place in New Zealand and in other parts of the world.
Professor Marks stated that the average working week in the UK is now 42.5 hours and that the UK is also the ‘unpaid overtime capital of Europe’ - implying that employers are unlikely to reduce workloads and would expect workers to undertake the same amount of work within four days that was previously undertaken in five.
A trial conducted by the US state of Utah which saw some excellent environmental results, as well as employee and employer benefits, closed due to poor customer satisfaction - with people complaining that they were unable to access government services as offices closed on a Friday.
In addition, it was found that employees who are expected to still work 35 hours - but across four days - will show decreased levels of productivity. It can also impact employees’ engagement, work-life balance and overall happiness. To achieve the desired effects of a four-day working week, standard 7 hour working days should be implemented.
Professor Marks thought that some organisations might look at practical issues and stated:
“It’s unworkable for them due to the volume of work or because they already work crippling 12-hour shifts and can’t cram more into a day or don’t earn enough to have the luxury of having three days off each week.”
She added:
“For most of us, a four-day work week therefore feels more like a pipe dream than a realistic ambition. It will benefit the very few whose organisations can reduce their workload to make it appropriate to 4 days. This is likely to apply to government workers since their departments will have to be seen to be a “four-day week success”. But more generally, a four-day week is likely to exacerbate existing inequalities and create resentment against those who get to have a three-day weekend.”
Professor Marks went on to say that, with nearly half of the UK workforce indicating that they are suffering from stress, clearly something must be done - and workers need to be working fewer hours, and particularly fewer intense hours.
The results from a study by Sanford University found that some of the world’s most productive countries, such as Norway; Denmark; Germany and the Netherlands work on average around 27 hours a week - the same hours proposed for a UK four-day working week. On the other hand, Japan - a nation notoriously known for overworked employees - ranks as number 20 out of 35 countries for productivity.
