7 companies in Britain try out a four-day working week.

7 companies in the UK try out the four-day working week

7 companies in the UK try out the four-day working week, and from June 6th, the UK implemented the world's largest four-day working week pilot activity, with more than 3, employees from all walks of life participating. Wages and output remained unchanged, and working hours were cut to 8%. 7 companies in Britain try out a four-day working week. 7 companies in the UK try out the four-day working week 1

From June 6th, more than 3,3 employees of 7 British companies started the new working mode experiment of working four days a week. Whether this experiment, which has been started for two weeks, has improved efficiency or reduced output is still inconclusive. But analysts believe that a four-day working week still provides a diversified choice for the right company.

reducing time and improving efficiency

the six-month experimental project is jointly organized by the non-profit organization "4 Day Week Global", think tank Autonomy, 4 Day Week Campaign and researchers from Cambridge University, Oxford University and Boston College. It is called the largest new working mode experiment in the world at present.

This experiment is based on the 1:8:1 model, that is, I hope to pay 8% of my working hours with 1% salary in exchange for the promise of maintaining 1% productivity.

The companies participating in the experiment were selected from 5 applicants, covering catering, education, software, law and finance. Researchers will work with each participating organization to measure the impact on enterprise productivity and employee well-being, and then observe the impact of the new working mode on the environment and gender equality.

It is said that at least one FTSE 1 company with hundreds of thousands of employees is also close to implementing the plan, and has tested the four-day work week system in one of its overseas offices.

Joe O'Connor, CEO of "Four Days a Week", said that Britain is at the peak of the wave of four days a week. He said: "As we come out of the epidemic, more and more companies realize that the new field of competition is the quality of life, and reducing working hours and taking output as the center is a tool to bring competitive advantage."

Juliet Shore, a sociology professor at Boston College, thinks this is a "historic experiment". "We will analyze the reaction of workers to an extra day off, including stress and burnout, work and life satisfaction, health, sleep, energy use, travel and many other aspects of life," she said.

Wyatt Watts, the team leader of the fish and chips company who participated in the experiment, said: Work makes me tired and have no energy, so I hope that having extra rest time will improve my energy level.

Watts believes that the decision to become a pilot has had an impact. He said, "team morale has improved, and I hope our work efficiency will be higher."

Ed Siegel, CEO of another British charity bank who participated in the experiment, said that he was proud to be one of the first banks in the UK to accept a four-day work week. He said: For a long time, we have been advocates of flexible work, but the epidemic has really promoted the progress of the goal.

Siegel believes that day five in the 2th century is no longer the best choice for the 21st century. "We firmly believe that a four-day working week with the same salary or benefits will create a happier workforce and have the same positive impact on corporate productivity, customer experience and our social mission."

Britain is not the only country considering reforming the job market. An experiment in Iceland has reduced the working hours of some public departments from 4 hours to 35 hours, which has been called "overwhelming success" by researchers. In Spain, the government is using 5 million euros from the EU rescue pool to fund a three-year experiment involving about 2 companies and 6, employees.

Reducing output and increasing pressure

But the four-day work system is also facing a lot of controversy. Some company bosses complain that with flexible work becoming the norm, employees' attitude towards work has become too casual after the epidemic. Christian Ulbrich, CEO of real estate giant JLL, said last month that employees now demand the treatment of "pop stars" and a four-day weekend holiday. He said that the labor market is very competitive, and employees are treated as "pop stars", so they feel that they can do anything they want.

Samantha Losey, the director of Unity, a communication company that participated in the experiment, thinks that the company was in chaos in the first week of the experiment, and hopes that the situation will improve after one week. In order to improve employees' efficiency, Unity also distributed mini traffic lights to employees' desks. Colleagues wearing "red" signals mean that they concentrate on their work and refuse to chat, so as to reduce the time wasted on chatting.

Some economists have pointed out that working four days a week will only aggravate the inactivity of the British economy. Annabel Denham of the British Institute for Economic Affairs said that there are about 99% small and medium-sized companies in Britain. How can these companies shorten their working hours by one fifth without actually affecting their customers? Even large companies may struggle, because letting employees work according to different schedules will increase their time to respond to changes.

In addition, Denham said that in order to complete the current workload within four days, employees will have to finish their work more effectively during working hours, while the company's performance will still be under pressure, and personal work efficiency will be monitored more closely, which may lead to a higher level of stress than expected.

Looking ahead, many experts believe that despite its shortcomings, the four-day work system may become one of the choices of flexible employment forms in the future because it meets the needs of some jobs. After all, the market economy is the best way to balance the boss's needs and employees' preferences, and companies can choose the work system that suits them best. 7 companies in the UK try out the four-day working week 2

According to media reports such as Pioneer Economy in South Korea, some Korean companies began to introduce the "four-day working week" and tried out relevant measures. According to the report, there is a heated discussion on the full implementation of the "four-day working week" in Korean society. Some people think that the system can shorten working hours and balance the "work-life relationship", but some people doubt that the system will "reduce production efficiency".

According to Pioneer Economy, Kakao, a well-known communication technology company in South Korea, will try out "No Work on Fridays" every other week from July 8, and it is estimated that the average working hours of employees will be reduced by up to 16 hours per month. According to the media, Kakao will also try out the "workplace freedom system" from July 4, that is, employees can freely choose their own workplace to complete their work.

In addition, according to Pioneer Economy, the "four-day working week" is also practiced in some large Korean enterprises that are traditionally more conservative. SK Telecom began to implement the "Happy Friday" system in 22, that is, employees can rest on Fridays in the third week of each month.

starting from this month, Fridays in the second and fourth weeks of each month are also rest days. The report said that since the implementation of "Happy Friday", SK Telecom found that shortening employees' working hours did not have a negative impact on production efficiency.

In addition, CJ Entertainment regards every Friday afternoon as the "self-development time" for its employees, which is actually implementing the "4.5-day working system". A survey shows that CJ entertainment staff are very satisfied with the company's implementation of this system.

Some enterprises implement "four-day working system" or "four-and-a-half-day working system". Some Korean media said that this is also a measure taken by Korean enterprises to attract talents, which also brings a kind of competition among enterprises.

At the same time, from June 6th, Britain also implemented the world's largest four-day week pilot activity, with more than 3, employees from all walks of life participating. The experiment lasted for half a year and was carried out in the mode of "1: 8: 1", that is, the salary and output remained unchanged and the working hours were cut to 8%.

For a time, the migrant workers in China left tears of envy. Everyone said, "Although the working hours are long, our salaries are low", "Don't believe rumors" and "This must be the sugar-coated cannonball of capitalism".

In fact, as a part of the global research on the 4-day working week project, the sponsor of the experiment has already given the significance of the experiment-to test whether it is beneficial to improve production efficiency and mental health of employees.

The focus is not on not reducing salary

but on being more efficient

This experiment is not the first in Britain.

In 215, the Icelandic government reduced the working hours from 4 hours per week to 35-36 hours. More than 2,5 employees participated in the experiment, which lasted for 4 years. Last year, the Icelandic government announced the results of the experiment, calling it an "overwhelming success", and 86% of Icelandic workers re-signed labor contracts with permanently shortened working hours.

In 219, Microsoft Japan implemented a five-week four-day working week, and the results were also surprising. Not only did the employee productivity increase by 39.9%, but the company's overall operating costs, including printer utilization rate and electricity consumption, were reduced because it was vacant for five days. Spain, New Zealand and other countries and enterprises also have similar initiatives.

But this time, the four-day working week initiated by Britain is indeed the largest in the world.

Some media believe that this experiment only reduced the working day by one day, but it didn't reduce the workload. It's not really "reducing work without reducing salary". In half a year, business managers want to see if employees can complete the original five-day workload in four days. If they can't, they will return to the original day five.

Julian Jessop, an economist at the British Institute for Economic Issues, said: "People must improve their productivity by 25% every day to finish five days' work in four days."

more people suggest that it may be effective for creative and mental work, but in most modern work, the time flow is very clear, and the working hours may not be compressed, and the daily workload of practitioners such as medical staff and teachers is already very heavy, so it is difficult to add extra workload.

So the discussion point extends from the practice of four-day working week itself to whether employees in enterprises can be more efficient.

efficient, efficient!

New topic of platitudes

Efficient production, platitudes, but it is a major topic in the management field, and there are many related experiments.

hawthorne experiment is famous: in 1924, western electronics companies conducted an experiment in Hawthorne factory in Illinois, in order to find out the factors that reduced productivity except "fatigue".

By 1927, the experiment had not made substantial progress, so Mayo, a professor of psychology at Harvard University, was invited to take charge of the research, and successively started four stages: lighting experiment, welfare experiment, interview experiment and group experiment. Later, it was concluded that employees' emotions and the interests of informal organizations in enterprises were the core of determining production efficiency.

It has been nearly 1 years since today, and its limitations and complexity have been tested. However, we have to admit that it pays more attention to the people in the organization and their emotions, which is of great significance to the improvement of production efficiency.

Some experts believe that the epidemic has affected many people's negative mentality, and the 4-day work system just takes into account everyone's emotions and is beneficial to employees' mental health.

However, in China, it sounds really unreliable to adjust employees' mood by shortening working hours, at least in the short term.

Perhaps a paper published by Liang Jianzhang, the chairman of Ctrip and an adjunct professor at Guanghua School of Management, Peking University in 215 in the top academic journal Economics Quarterly may be more useful for today's epidemic development and frequent home work.

Not only Britain and South Korea

Many countries have already started to try out the "four-day working week"

New Zealand's non-profit organization "4 Day Week Global" said that more than 3,3 workers from banking, marketing, health care, financial services, retail and hotel industries have participated in it.

These companies, which voluntarily try out four days a week, include banks, hotels, animation studios, office white-collar workers, recruitment companies, charities and even fish and potato shops.

Canada, the United States and Ireland are currently conducting the same pilot project, including Spain and Scotland ...

"4 Day Week Global "said in a statement:

The five-day work week is out of date!

So far, Iceland has carried out the largest related trial from 215 to 219, with 2,5 public and private employees (equivalent to 1% of the country's working population) participating.

The trial results show that:

The productivity of participants has not decreased, and the happiness of employees has also greatly improved.

This trial has ushered in an "overwhelming success" in Iceland!

Although the trial of "working four days a week" sounds good,

there is also a problem to be noted, that is, employees have to finish the same amount of work as five days in four days, which may mean longer working hours every day for many people ...

But someone said:

"If I know that I can work quickly, I can enjoy an extra day off.

Although only a few companies in Australia are participating in the trial,

Perhaps more companies will join in the future as its influence expands ... 7 companies in the UK try out the four-day working week. 3

According to the Financial Times, about 7 companies in the UK began to try out the four-day working week on June 6, with the aim of testing whether this system is conducive to improving production efficiency and promoting employees' physical and mental health.

this experiment will last for half a year. During this period, the participating employees only need to work four days a week, and their salaries will remain unchanged, but the prerequisite is that their labor efficiency will remain unchanged.

The enterprises participating in the experiment include software developers, financial companies, consulting companies, recruitment companies, charities, educational institutions, retailers, restaurants, etc., and the number of employees involved reaches 3,3.

It is reported that this experiment is part of a global research project on four-day working week, and it is the largest pilot activity of "short working week" so far. It is run by the non-profit organization "Global Four-day Working Week", think tank Autonomy, and the British Four-day Week Global in cooperation with researchers from Cambridge University, Oxford University and Boston College.

British companies participating in this experiment.