Will a 4-Day Workweek Increase Happiness?
Federal legislation seeks to adjust the hours we work
Over the past several years there’s been a growing international call for decreasing the current 40-hour workweek to 32 hours. Companies and governments around the globe have experimented with adjusting the days and hours we work to see whether productivity remained the same.
Last summer, the UK started the world’s biggest 4-day workweek experiment, with 3,300 workers from 61 companies trying out the new way of working. One employer who joined the study observed that the pandemic “made us think a great deal about work and how people organize their lives,” she said. “We’re doing this to improve the lives of our staff and be part of a progressive change in the world.”
Before the UK trial, Iceland conducted its own experiment with 2,500 workers and found “no corresponding drop in productivity among participants, and a dramatic increase in employee well-being.”
According to CNBC, more than 900 workers across 33 businesses in the U.S. and Ireland ran through the same program last year, and none of them are going back to a five-day model. Participating companies “reported improved productivity, revenue, morale and team culture, whereas individuals saw benefits for their health, finances and relationships.”
As you know, this newsletter focuses on creating a more conscious workplace and how we can help create a future of work that works for everyone. That means it’s important to examine and question the prevailing beliefs and systems of how we work, including the amount of time we spend at work. The end goal is to create work that provides high quality of life for employees while also ensuring they can create a fulfilling life outside of what they do for work.
The 40-hour workweek is enshrined in law, but laws change as technology and culture change. The current standard was instituted when the U.S. government started tracking the impact of work in the late 1800s and found employees were often working 100-hour weeks doing difficult labor-intensive work.
In 1926, Henry Ford started taking note that working more than 40-hour weeks didn’t translate to increased productivity. The 40-hour workweek he established quickly became an industry standard and spread throughout the labor force.
And in 1938 Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which required employers to pay their staff for overtime if they worked more than 44 hours (adjusted to 40 hours two years later).
It’s been 85 years since Congress decided to codify the 40-hour workweek. And think about all the monumental changes that have happened in society since then. Internet, email, video conferencing, the convenience of air travel for work, cell phones, and personal computers. Society has almost completely changed, but we still use some of the same standards instituted before such advances in technology.
With the advent of a new technology, there’s always the promise it will make life easier and we’ll all work less. But instead of decreasing our work with technological advances, we maintain the same early-1900 frameworks created well before such technologies existed.
The pandemic was a true test of how we can leverage technology for knowledge workers. Many employees were surprised by what they experienced in this forced experiment: they could create a life they love while working on a flexible schedule remotely. And they saw what life could be like without a commute.
Now that employees have realized that the old way of thinking about the necessity of being co-officed wasn’t true, they’re questioning other long-held beliefs about the best way to work. That includes the necessity of working a 40-hour week.
Congressional legislation was introduced in 2021 that would adjust the workweek to 32 hours. Authored by Representative Mark Takano, the bill would amend the Fair Labor Standards Act again so that employees would be paid overtime for working more than 32 hours. While the bill didn’t advance last session, Rep. Takano reintroduced the legislation this year because he believes a new standard workweek “will increase the happiness of humankind.”
Rep. Takano’s legislation is well-intended. However, the risk of decreasing the workweek is that employers will then pay their employees less, thus hurting workers financially. To create a future of work that works for everyone requires far more than just adjusting the number of hours we work. It will require conscious leadership that seeks to help their teams create fulfilling lives in and outside of work.
Conscious leaders understand how to build a successful business while also setting up for success all stakeholders in their venture—especially employees. As the global experiments have shown, decreasing work hours while maintaining current levels of pay translates to greater employee satisfaction, which then translates to greater success for the company.
When he established the 40-hour work week, Henry Ford stated, “It is high time to rid ourselves of the notion that leisure for workmen is either lost time or a class privilege.”
This kind of thinking evidenced some conscious leadership: the desire to break down class barriers and see employees as fellow humans, as opposed to a resource meant to maximize profit at all costs. As we enter a new era of work, we can build on this sentiment and continue to create a more conscious workplace for all.
Work happy. Live happy. BE happy.
Meredith
The way we work and build teams is rapidly changing. Leaders often feel unprepared to navigate the transition. As a conscious leadership coach, consultant, and communicator, Meredith helps leaders and their teams create new ways of working and relating so they can prepare for the future by consciously co-creating it.
Contact her to develop your conscious leadership and transform your organization into the workplace of the future.
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