OPINION | By Fiona Patten
A four-day working week. It’s a sensible, exciting and well-established idea whose time has finally come, COVID-19 shows us.
The pandemic has not only triggered agility, resilience and effectiveness in our response; we’d readily manage the transition to a four-day working week. It has also caused many to reassess priorities – which is leading to mass resignations amid rising burnout.
Recent research suggests as many as four in 10 workers – from blue-collar to C-suite – are mulling quitting their jobs. The Great Reassessment is leading to The Big Quit.
This fuels the compelling case for change, that here is a light in the COVID-19 gloom, for there is clearly need and scope for getting the work/life trade-off in better shape.
I am calling for a trial, in line with governments and businesses the world over. Reason Party took this policy to the last election. Again, it is an idea whose time has come, albeit it in terrible circumstances.
International evidence shows pretty much everyone wins from a four-day working week, and at the expense of none.
It often boosts productivity and profits. It benefits employers, employees and customers. It gives people freedom and control.
It’s healthy for the economy, society and the environment – including less traffic congestion and pollution. Before COVID-19, traffic congestion was the biggest brake on Victoria’s economy, costing billions of dollars in lost productivity and in illness.
It is not radical, but rational, and simply continues something that began when the industrial revolution ushered in work as we know it more than 250 years ago.
It appears an inevitable milestone along the road from when the working week was six 12-hour days. That’s around twice the level to which it has fallen in Australia.
The five-day working week came less than a century ago. Most nations’ average working weeks range from 40-50 hours. That’s contracting further around the place, as the four-day working week spreads.
We should start here by trialling the policy in a government department, with a view to rolling it out across the Victorian public service, which accounts for about one in 10 of the state’s jobs.
We risk little by conducting a limited trial, but plenty should we ignore the opportunity.
In 2018 the Parliamentary Budget Office estimated at our request a four-day week trial within the Department of Treasury and Finance for 12 months would save the government close to $4 million in non-wage expenses.
Imagine that across the entire bureaucracy. Those savings could go to alleviating homelessness, mental health, frontline health workers, and so much more.
In the three decades before COVID-19, as working hours declined and workplace flexibility slowly rose, the share of corporate revenue going to profits has been historically high. In the past several years, real wages have been stagnant.
COVID-19 has shown how adaptable we are individually and at every level. Working from home has shown the value of technology-enhanced flexibility. We have learned to do things differently. We have been reminded there are other things in life than just work. That we truly should work to live, not live to work.
International evidence abounds. For the five years to 2019, Iceland’s government and the Reykjavik City Council reduced almost 3000 workers’ hours without cutting their pay.\
Men started doing a bit more of their fair share of domestic work. Baby steps. We need to avoid most of the benefit of reduced work hours flowing as usual to men.
Productivity was steady in most workplaces and rose in some. Today, almost nine in 10 of Iceland’s workers have either moved to shorter hours or been given the right to.
In August 2019, Microsoft Japan gave 2300 employees a paid Friday off each week. Productivity leapt 40 per cent. But it was not just the reduced hours. Productivity increased through fewer and shorter meetings and by using online platforms for teamwork.
The previous year, New Zealand financial company Perpetual Guardian held a similar trial. Staff continued to receive their full pay. The financial company permanently adopted the policy and New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern suggests taking the option national.
The Spanish government is underwriting a trial three-year transition to a four-day week.
A four-day working week increases productivity, profits, wellbeing and creativity. It reduces physical and mental illness.
It makes savings in the cost of the public service, without reducing wages. It attracts and helps retain top staff.
History shows us the reduction in working hours is both a cause and effect of higher productivity. History tells us now is the time to take the next liberating step.