Jobs    Everything

Select a Metro Area

How companies are rejiggering the workweek to offer 4-day and 32-hour options.

There has been a lot of buzz in recent years about reimagining the work day and work week, but not everyone agrees on how it should change. As my colleague Kathleen Davis noted in a recent article, simply offering a 4-day workweek “fails to solve some of the most fundamental problems with many people’s working hours. What about parents with work schedules that are misaligned with their kids’ school day? Or sleep-deprived medical staff who work more than 12-hour shifts, or service workers dealing with unpredictable schedules?”

Ed Jennings, the CEO of Quickbase, offered this advice for implementing a shorter workweek: “Eliminate redundant processes and replace them with company-standard approaches, and employees will have time to tackle more strategic activities.”

HISTORY OF THE 40-HOUR WEEK

“Working 9 to 5” isn’t just a hit tune warbled from the throat of Dolly Parton, the companion film poked fun at decades of 8-hour office days. You’d be forgiven if you thought that things were always this way. But the fact is, the genesis of the 40-hour workweek was the factory floor in the early days of the 20th century. That’s when Henry Ford, in 1926, offered his factory workers a couple days off to rest, ushering in the weekend. This was followed 14 years later by the Fair Labor Standards Act, which capped the workweek at 40 hours nationwide.

MOVING TOWARD A 32-HOUR WEEK

Flash forward nearly a century and you’ll see that the 40-hour standard has begun to be disrupted. Experiments abound in countries such as New Zealand and Australia making the case for reducing the workweek by a day. The supporting data was all geared toward measuring output rather than hours spent in the workplace. 

Continue reading the Fast Company article BY LYDIA DISHMAN: https://www.fastcompany.com/91124421/heres-what-people-are-saying-about-the-move-to-shorter-workweeks

Share This