Recently the BBC’s Business Daily had a short discussion about the introduction of the 4 Day Week. This workplace reform has knocked about for a few years now and seems to have some mental health and job satisfaction benefits. This is enough for it to interest occupational health and safety (OHS), especially as it is one of the few examples of a structural and organisational change rather than an intervention aimed at each individual worker.
The BBC discussion indicates the difference (it may be a schism) between a new way of thinking about work and the old traditional way. The opponent to the 4 Day Week emphasises the individual over the organisational and compares service industries to those that produce goods.
The episode, now a podcast, is a good introduction to the for and against of the 4 Day Week but careful listening shows the challenge ahead.
Advocates of the 4 Day Week believe that such a working week structure improves productivity and job satisfaction due to the ability to separate work from home life.
Patrick Gamble of Perpetual Guardian, a New Zealand company which has gained attention for its 4 Day Week program. Gamble emphasises the flexibility offered by the 4 Day Week
“The staff are all offered the four day a week. A lot of them have taken up. It hasn’t become a draconian thing where we tell people you must take this day off or that day off. Some people have opted to do shorter hours through the week so we have some people working, instead of nine-to-five they would work, nine-to-three but do that five days a week because that allows them to pick up the kids and be at home for their families more. So we’ve introduced other forms of flexibility as well. But a lot of the stuff is still there, the four-day-week seems to be the most popular format.”
It is important to remind one’s self that Perpetual Guardian is a white-collar company of investment and financial advice. It is not a producer of things.
Mark Effron is president of the Talent Strategy Group, a global human resource management consultancy firm, who speaks on the BBC program as a counterpoint to Gamble:
“…it feels like somehow we’re rewarding people for being efficient by saying, well, because you were wasting so much time before, now that you found some of that time by squeezing into a four day workweek will allow you just to work those four days. Why wouldn’t we simply say, ‘Gee you’re kind of inefficient, you’re on Facebook a lot, you’re having meetings that last twice as long as they should. Stop doing that and repurpose that into more productive time.'”
[You wouldn’t want to be a cigarette smoker in the Talent Strategy Group!]
Effron speaks about productivity and efficiency almost entirely about empowering individual workers to work better. He also seems to be referencing the production of goods rather than services, implying that production must be “on” all the time to enable continuity of supply. In a service industry, and a large company with lots of employees, like Perpetual Guardian, it is possible to cycle one’s staff so that a consistent level of production is available at the same time as allowing individual workers the flexibility they desire or need.
This perspective is unsurprising in a person running an Human Resources (HR) management company. We see repeatedly the inability of HR to help manage productivity and worker mental health in any ways other than at the individual worker level, even though there is good evidence that safety, health and productivity can be effectively managed and increased when organisations integrate these factors into their management structures from the start.
Effron’s myopia is clearer in response to a statement from the interviewer Manuela Saragossa about rewarding workers for improved efficiency:
“….that’s lovely but they’re not producing anything more at that point. What we’ve said is what it used to take five days to get done now we can do it in four. Okay, cool. So it feels like it’s wonderful that we’ve squeezed work into that four day frame instead of a five day frame, but you haven’t improved anything, have you, you’ve simply done the exact same thing in a shorter period of time.”
If we were manufacturing widgets and wanted to increased the production numbers, Effron’s perspective is valid, but for service industries like Perpetual Guardian there are two priorities – maintaining (or improving) the quality of their service, and, the mental health of their employees. Effron seems not to consider the mental health factor.
When Saragossa raises the issue of Happiness, Effron responds:
“Well, if you look at the best science happiness actually doesn’t drive anything engagement drives a lot what tends to engage people and drive higher results is challenge,….”
Happiness in this discussion became a distraction. If Saragossa had asked about mental health or psychological health, a different answer would have been likely. Happiness has many connotations and usually slews towards wellness rather than the mental health benefits and flexibility discussed by Gamble.
Charlotte Lockhart is a strong advocate for the 4 Day Week, having seemingly made a career out of the concept. In the interview with Saragossa, Lockhart counters the accusation that changing to the new configuration is hard, disruptive and costly. When asked about the negative experience of the Wellcome Foundation, she replies:
“What they did was they tried to solve all of the problems from the C suite, so the C suite is your senior leadership team. They tried to solve all those problems before even running a trial. They also made the decision that, that it was Fridays that was going to be the day off, but they are a seven day a week operation. You know what we say is, give people the time off that best suits the business and themselves. But the biggest tip I can give a business leader is do not overthink it. Because the minute you start trying to understand how some of the issues work, you’re going to just get yourself in the way of a staff member solving that problem for you. The genius that comes out of your business when you ask yourself to solve this problem which is productivity, that they do it because you’re giving them time off, which is the thing that they really want.”
Lockhart’s points are perhaps better understood by looking more closely at Patrick Gamble’s words. He does not prescribe a 4 Day Week and is far more flexible than Effron implies or that Lockhart says Wellcome was.
Lockhart says that all a company and its leadership needs to do is to be brave and, most importantly, to trial the change. Such a trial does not need to include the whole organisation, in fact that might be the best way to fail. As with safety culture, these types of changes are best trialled in a small, specific section of the business or operations in order to determine if the 4 Day Week concept is culturally and organisationally compatible.
And Lockhart mentions an historical, social and gendered aspect to the 4 Day Week not mentioned by the others in the podcast, but that fits well with some of the current advocacy by various trade unions as some countries move out of the COVID19 pandemic.
“It’s about having a leadership who were prepared to take a chance. When we brought on the 40 Hour Work Week. It was Dad that went to work, he came home at the end of the day and he had a meal with the family because there were no cell phones and laptops and no always on. Mum was not working and she did stuff around the house and in the community and with the children and with the schools. Now, mum’s working, dad’s working.
……The way we are working isn’t fit for purpose so we’ve got to do something. And we know from all of the businesses that are doing a four day week around the world that they are more productive, they have a healthier workforce…”
There seems to be good OHS reasons for the 4 Day Week but even Gamble admits that more data is required and that such a structure may not fit everyone. He also acknowledges the Working From Home concept that has become prominent in 2020.
The BBC podcast is a good introduction to the 4 Day Week concept but the discussion has a subtext that illustrates the continuing contrast of OHS and HR approaches to managing workers, the difference between a traditional approach and innovation, and the individual vs the organisational. These are tensions that OHS must address and work through, and evidence will help.