Is a Shorter Work Week in Our Future?
November 30, 2023
While the COVID-19 pandemic has brought remote working into the mainstream, the need for “work-life balance” is something American workers have long taken for granted, and the ability to customize one’s work hours with “flex time” has been available to many for decades, for most U.S. employees, a four-day, full-time workweek has seemed like a pipe dream.
In the past few years, a handful of companies, such as Kickstarter, did begin to offer reduced work hours for full-time employees. But for the most part, U.S. businesses have remained skeptical and have stuck to the 40-hour workweek introduced by Henry Ford in 1926. Federal law, with the Fair Labor Standards Act in1938, then established a maximum workweek of 40 hours and mandated overtime pay for hours worked beyond that. Over the years, shorter work hours have been the result of worker advocacy, labor movements, and legislation that sought to improve working conditions and promote worker well-being.
Countries and companies that have experimented with implementing shorter workweeks or reduced daily work hours have had mostly positive results: for employees, lower stress levels, better work-family balance, and better overall health; for employers, higher retention rates, improved morale, and often even greater productivity. Since 2021, Japan’s government has encouraged businesses to implement four-day workweeks. When Microsoft Japan tested a four-day workweek with three-day weekends in 2019, keeping employees at the same salary, productivity increased dramatically.
While attitudes in the United States about the necessity for a five-day workweek have been slow to change, they finally seem to be shifting. Americans work more hours and take less vacation days than employees in other countries, and they are beginning to wonder why. One thing that striking UAW leaders are now asking for, along with higher pay, more paid time off, and pension benefits, is a four-day workweek, working 32 hours for 40 hours of pay, and more time off “to spend with family.”
The COVID-19 pandemic, with its shift to remote working, has made it apparent to employers that changes in work patterns can work. Many employers had been afraid that employees working from home would not be productive, and were surprised to find that many remote employees were actually more productive with their increased flexibility and greater sense of autonomy, and when relieved of the burden of commuting,.
Another consideration influencing the acceptance of a shorter workweek is its environmental impact. A British study found that one less day a week of commuting by U.K. workers would reduce car travel by 691 million miles per week.
American workers have long seen the advantages of a shorter workweek. It seems that American businesses are starting to see them too.