During the global soul-searching that followed the rupture of Covid-19 lockdowns, one idea for how we might live better suddenly seemed plausible: the four-day work week.
The model is simple but somewhat counterintuitive. Employees work fewer hours for the same salary while getting the same amount of (or even more) work done. Advocates say this is made possible by reducing meeting times, streamlining workflows and prioritising work more efficiently.
But despite the hype and the reports of successful trials, the four-day week remains niche.
Last year Bupa and Unilever walked away from trials of reduced work hours, citing the four-day model as “rigid”. Last month Launceston city council scrapped plans to become the first Australian government body to introduce a four-day work week after backlash from the business sector. Yet, after failing to have the four-day work week seriously considered in last year’s productivity roundtable, the Australian Council of Trade Unions has again called for a right for workers to request a four-day work week.
So, given that the majority of full-time workers are still working five days a week, whatever happened to this much promised work-life-balance nirvana?
“It’s certainly not dead, the conversation has become more mature” says Debbie Bailey, the co-chief executive of 4 Day Week Global, a not-for-profit research body that advocates for reduced working hours.
“Under the surface there are organisations, industries and governments all over the world that are moving in the direction of reduced work hours,” she says. “It’s now less about the clickbait headline and more about how can companies implement reduced work hours safely in a variety of ways.”
At Versa, an AI tech company with 38 employees, all staff have taken Wednesdays off since 2018. That makes it the first Australian company to adopt the four-day work week, according t the chief executive, Kath Blackman.
“When there was all the hype about [the four-day work week] during Covid, a lot of businesses were really struggling to find good staff, so it was a real differentiator,” Blackman says.
Today, as the rapid advancement of AI causes rolling layoffs in the tech sector, that labour market has weakened. “There’s a huge pool of talent coming into the market now, you don’t need to be as competitive any more,” she says. The incentive to offer flexibility, at least in her industry, has declined.
But AI has shifted the dial in other ways, Blackman says. Versa is increasingly using AI to maintain or boost productivity despite employees working fewer hours than the norm. “We need to be giving the time saved by AI back to our team,” she says.
“It’s been 100 years since the five-day week became the norm. We’ve had all these technological advancements since then that have made us way more productive, but not once have we thought that we…
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